Three FIngers, 2020 © Joseph Desler Costa

As more faces pop into the Zoom meeting, a colorful grid of diverse backgrounds comes to life, each box a window into the private home of virtual strangers. Joseph Desler Costa addresses the group, providing preliminary instructions on how to change our views or type questions into the chat feature. This scene, resembling what Costa calls a "weird 2020 version of the brady bunch intro," has become increasingly common for many of us as we spend more time isolated in our homes with video chat as a primary source of communication. "We’ll fumble our way through this together," says Costa as he shares his screen to take us through a slideshow of his exhibition.

“Dream Date,” Costa's third solo show in New York City, opened at ClampArt on March 5th, only to be closed a week later due to COVID-19. Like many galleries in the country and around the world, ClampArt is pivoting to an online only exhibition and has invited the public to a virtual discussion and exhibition tour.

Based in memories and inspired by early influences of shiny pop culture imagery, such as magazine and album covers, “Dream Date” takes us back to Costa’s teenage years to question how memories and consumer fantasies are affected by the images we see in our daily lives.

It's a shame we can only experience Costas work via a slideshow, as the depth of his vivid layers and the glow of his reflective materials should truly be seen in-person to be appreciated. Printed on aluminum, the glossy top layers seem to shine from within, resembling an iPhone screen, as Costa explains, through which most of us are now accustomed to viewing images. Though it’s impossible to notice in a digital format, viewers would see themselves reflected back in the aluminum surface, just as popular imagery forces us to compare our lives to those of others. “This idea of a better version of ourselves is often influenced by all the media we look at,” Costa says.

Costa laser cuts various shapes into the aluminum to reveal a bright gradient layer underneath. He compares this to his memories of putting stickers on various objects – i.e. notebooks, skateboards, or guitars – a childhood memory I’m sure many of us share. Costa calls this physical marking of an object as a declaration of importance, an “act of love,” a practice we have almost entirely lost in the age of the “like” button.

Unfortunately, it’s only from particular photos of the exhibition that you can see the depth and texture variation created from these disparate layers. However, Costa’s use of multiple exposures is beautifully rendered and creates the perfect reference to the nature of memories themselves – one layered over the other, each slightly faded, some with gaping holes. Impossible to fully formulate, these memories are about to slip away. Like the images we now endlessly scroll through on our screens, nothing seems to stick.

As Costa wrapped up his talk and answered questions, I’m sure we each appreciated living in a technological age where we can continue to experience art while confined to our homes. But there’s a price we pay for accessibility and much of Costa’s work is lost in digital translation.

“Dream Date” reclaims memories of a time before digital consumption of imagery, and now we can only experience it from our screens. Perhaps the work predicted the way it would ultimately be viewed, purely digitally and glowing from within, as it slips away from our shortened attention spans.

Check out “Dream Date” the virtual exhibit on Clamp Art

View more of Joseph Desler Costa’s work on his website