Joseph del Pesco

They say that a picture is worth a 1,000 words but Joseph del Pesco says a poem is worth a 1,000 images. Del Pesco is a contemporary art curator and arts writer based in San Francisco, California, he was recently, April 21, down at U.C. Davis to give a lecture on the curatorial practice.

However, the lecture itself was quite different than I expected, I was more expecting a long winded, straight forward explanation of how he became a curator and all that was involved in beginning a curator. What we all got instead was a interesting look at how Joseph in his work is somewhat artistic in his own right. He started with a slide show that had no sound just images and words that were supposed to create connections using only visuals and language. Basically, his whole lecture was about how contemporary art is a form of communication. He said the film was about free association game similar to word association, that is supposed to show the importance that we place on certain words and how some tend to have higher priorities in our minds.

He goes on to discuss the idea behind the short film, how it uses a single word in a singular visual "about how it writes a whole story using one word." Del Pesco was incredibly passionate about the use of words and word play, which fits into the fact that he is also a writer as well. Del Pesco has had his writing published in Flash Art, Manifesta Journal, Fillip, NUKE, X-Tra, Proximity, NERO, Mousse, and TENbyTEN Magazines, as well as writting several short stories quite which he touched on during his lecture.

He talked about how he liked to write about stories that were somewhat

fantasy with plenty of elements of reality so that the stories weren't so far fetched from the truth. Sort of like creating a world in which the impossible isn't so impossible after all. I feel like this is a perfect representation of Joseph himself, because he isn't what someone would expect from a curator. 

The word alone tends to imply old man, maybe wearing a suit possibly glasses, but Joseph describes how curating now is much different then people would expect it is almost as if one must collaborate with the artists to create something together. However when asked if he would consider himself an artist as well he answered with a question, "well what is art?". He said that he would have to define the word art before he could describe himself as anything to know what the word would imply, he would rather consider more of a designer but was always "aware of the line". 

Lets just say that Joseph del Pesco was, like his works, outside of the idealistic view.