Tom Costa

Tom Costa

Bits of siding, brick, and glass hang from teetering structures in Tom Costa’s expertly rendered paintings of ruined houses. He portrays only facades, as if to say that there was never more than appearance, like a wild west movie set. The structures are isolated, apparently built far from other human habitation. Their environments seem more symbolic than real, blending the imaginary geographies and staged lighting of renaissance portraiture with the tapered shapes of medieval altarpieces. It is perhaps this symbolic quality that gives Costa’s structures their density, the sense that much thought and feeling has been boiled down to give these images their power. If the shaped canvases are reminiscent of icons, then these are icons in reverse: reverently painted figures of neglect and dissolution. The architectural skeletons suggest the decay of the middle class American Dream, the surrounding landscape preparing to revert to its condition before the arrival of Europeans on the continent. In Swiss Cheese (2008), we look through the deteriorated A-frame to city lights twinkling in a distant valley, hinting that not everyone’s home shares the same fate.

Costa’s choice to portray only the facade of each structure is both odd and purposeful. One cannot look at these remains without noticing the ruined grids, imaginary Mondrians in disrepair. To what end is our attention called to the picture plane and the grid that subdivides it? Is Costa making a point about the collapse of traditional pictorial structures, suggesting they have become obsolete? If so, his use of an old-school, illusionistic oil technique becomes an interesting contradiction. Perhaps he seeks to set up a squat in the gutted remains of these methods and make his home for as long as possible. Or perhaps Costa aims to spark a phoenix-like rebirth, creating new life from the rubble. As long as he continues to generate interesting questions, it would seem Costa is on solid ground.

Profile by Daniel Gerwin