Joseph Desler Costa is an American/Italian artist who works in photography, video and new media. Costa’s practice explores ideas of consumerism, pop culture, nostalgia and desire. His works often use the language of commercial imagery to examine the aesthetics of material culture, notions of luxury and the ways in which perceptions of reality bend under the forces of commerce. Employing multiple exposure, re-photography, and cut paper constructions as well as die-cut layered prints, Costa produces photographs and films that appear almost entirely machine-made; revealing, questioning, and embracing illusions of transcendence and transformation offered by mass production and consumerism.
Costa currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He holds an advanced degree from ICP-Bard College (MFA) and attended the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión (EICTV) in Cuba. Past exhibitions include Them!, Transformer Station, Cleveland, USA; Particle Paradise, Foley Gallery, NY, USA; Thread Count, Unseen Photo Fair, Amsterdam, NL; Photography is Magic, Aperture Foundation, NY, USA; The Art of Now, The Hearst Galleries, NY, USA; and Expanded Geographies, Lianzhou Foto, Lanzhou, China.
Costa’s Photographic works are included in the permanent collections of the Leonard Lauder Collection, the Cleveland Clinic Art Collection, BNY Mellon Collection, the Bidwell Collection and the collection of the International Center of Photography. Costa has curated and organized a number of exhibitions, books and zines including group shows at Baxter St. Camera Club of NY and Foley Gallery. In 2014, Costa founded the imprint Silent Face Projects. Costa is a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts in New York and The International Center of Photography.