STEPHEN FRAILEY: To begin with, the work is seductive. Or at least fulfills all the codes of materialist desire of which we seem to be culturally enthralled. But the work is not a predictable critique, it has an affection, almost feverish, for this shiny utopia. Is it advocating superficiality?
JOSEPH DESLER COSTA: I understand that all things shiny and seductive have come to represent material culture and in turn commerce itself, but I wonder if there is another possibility. Images depicting or triggering our desires may dig and cut deeper than just attempting to access our bank accounts. Photography now more than ever has the ability to picture our own ideal worlds. Social media has conditioned us to expect less reality and more of a fabricated possibility from photography. Commercial imagery has long promised us that there are better versions of ourselves or our lives out there for the taking. Even if we know it’s unattainable or a lie, what’s wrong with accepting that? Is it superficial to believe something better or more beautiful is possible? Do we blame beauty and pin it as misleading? I need money to buy, but I don’t need money to believe or to dream. I’m a bit uncomfortable at how spiritual this may sound, but is there a difference between superficiality and belief or faith?
The pictures in ‘Dream Date’ are a culmination of the effect commercial culture has had on me since I was a teenager— which is when I think I really started to understand what wanting something felt like. Materialism, commercial culture and an unrelenting diet of media imagery not only affect the way I imagine the future, but also affect the way I remember the past. The feverish affection you ask about is a desire not only to picture the things I hope to have and to be, but also a way to polish the things I was, grew up on and am trying to forget. Photography allows and enables a flexibility of memory and reality in a way that nothing else can; and for better or worse it often takes its cues from advertising.
SF: So, in a pure form it represents aspiration? I am somehow reminded of the function of stained glass windows in a church, perhaps it is the luminosity of your work, but also the idea of a ‘higher’ longing that is actually immaterial.
JDC: Aspiration infers that some sort of transformation is possible. Aspiration refers to something we strive to have or become. The possibility of transformation— even if it might be mostly impossible or unattainable — is maybe something art, advertising and religion all have in common.
Photography can allow the ordinary and banal to become extraordinary. A beer can or a tennis shoe have the ability within them to become things other than themselves. They can become more than simple, mass-produced objects. Think of Lucas Blalock’s hot dog pictures for example. They become so much more than sweaty hot dogs. The manner in which something is photographed, lit and even styled can release that potential. Using material to point at immaterial longing is what is so exciting for me as I make these pictures. The immaterial I’m interested in accessing may be the belief that everything has a greater potential. The ‘higher’ longing you mention is simply the act of seeking to unlock or release that potential. Even if it’s usually an illusion.
I have always been so obsessed with stained glass windows and my mother is actually a stained glass artist, so I love that reference. My photos are dye-sublimation prints on super high-gloss aluminum and in person they really do glow. They are also usually highly colorful and exert a sort of strange dimensionality not so different to the way an iPhone screen glows. Which is maybe not so different than the way stained glass windows glow. The pictures are layered prints with laser cut shapes that reveal another image behind the first layer. These cut out shapes also give the feeling that you are looking through the photograph to something else. This looking through is also very similar to the way windows and screens function.
SF: It’s interesting to note that regardless of the substantial physical aspects of your work that it's presence is quite etherial.
JDC: I think the ethereal quality or lightness in the pictures is a result of the fact that the majority of the work is made up of multiple exposures. A multiple exposure is a quite literal way of dealing with time, or the progression of time in a photograph. Rather than a frame being made up of a single instant, it’s made up of multiple instances. Single moments are compounded upon one another until forms and objects collapse and degrade. Time runs together. Objects feel lighter and ghostly, as if they’re fading away. It’s a cliché way of picturing memory and time, but nonetheless effective. Things get fuzzy and blurry and harder to hold. In the picture ‘Wrestlers’, rather than just photographing a figure wearing a wrestling unitard in a single frame, multiple exposure allowed me to complicate the formal qualities of the unitard while at the same time lightening the figure wearing them. The effect is a picture that is more about the graphics of the unitard overtaking the body than the figure wearing them. In most of my pictures — heavy becomes light. A motorcycle floats. A sneaker ascends. I also photograph colored paper as a gradient layer in the multiple exposures. This overlay of color adds a texture that submerges many of the images in specific hues and tones.
SF: Glad you mentioned that unitard, a good word to know. There is a boyish-atletic-gym-class-shop class fetisism in your work that reminds me of early Matthew Barney. Could you discuss the erotics of the work?
JDC: As a teenager, I had an experience of feeling uncomfortable in my body when I was forced to wear a unitard for the first in a gym class. Gym class and participating in sports is also when I first became aware of my physical potential and strength. Bodies can be both awkward and beautiful, but also transformable. Physical training means there is a potential to be reached. The pictures reflect my athletic past but more than athleticism, the pictures fetishize and idealize youth. Young bodies are tighter and smoother, but also recall freedom, abandon, recklessness and untapped potential. As I get older I realize certain things are no longer possible for me. Certain doors are closed or closing. Advertising and commercial culture impress upon us an idea that everything is possible. I think this is a very American concept, and it’s undoubtedly linked to athletics, motorsports, music, fashion and commercial culture. My pictures eroticize not only bodies, but also the mass produced objects that promise expanded potential. Things like motorbikes, tennis shoes or helmets are beautiful not only because of their design but also because of the potential they might unlock in us, the consumer.
SF: So many objects have a relationship to the body. I used to suggest to students who were involved with objects and their narrative to look very carefully at the drugstore and sports store, because of the body.
One more question, please. In your current show "Dream Date' some of the pictures like ‘New 1987’ and ‘Order Substance’ and ‘Drip Rainbow’ seem as signs, not images in the way we understand them. This feels problematic and subversive (both good)—taking away the modeling of photographs, making them into decals. Do you anticipate exploring this more? Will your photographs become signage?
JDC: The majority of images we see in the world are interrupted by design, text and logo placement. Graphics have become part of pictures. I wanted to see what it would look like to include these interruptions of shape and design physically into my photographs. I was also thinking back to a time before the ‘like’ button, when if you liked something, you'd put a sticker or patch on it. Stickers on skateboards, guitars and helmets. Patches and buttons on jean jackets. The graphic additions were a way to mark something as special and important — as a ‘liked’ thing.
The addition of graphics in my pictures is an act of love of sorts. I’m marking the picture as ’liked’ in the same way I might do to a skateboard.
As I started working more with graphic elements, I began experimenting with cutting logos and text directly into the surface of the images. The graphics are actually laser cut holes in the aluminum that the photographs are printed on. The graphic holes reveal another print behind the first. This second print layer is the color gradient you see that fills in and occupies the space left by the hole in the first layer. It’s kind of like putting a hole in a page and seeing a bit of the page behind it through the hole.
I’m really happy you compare my work to posters and decals, and I wonder if photographs have already all have become signage. I’m really interested in collapsing the line between what a picture is, and what it is meant to do. But more than anything, I find it really thrilling walking a tight-rope between art and commerce.
