Artist Registry
The White Columns Curated Artist Registry is an online platform for emerging and under-recognized artists to share images and information about their respective practices. The Registry seeks to create a context for artists who have yet to benefit from wider critical, curatorial or commercial support. To be eligible, artists cannot be affiliated with a commercial gallery in New York City.
To apply to the Registry, click here. Join our mailing list here to receive our open call announcement and other programming updates. For any further questions about the Registry, please contact us at registry@whitecolumns.org.
STATEMENT OF WORK
Diogeneis Costa is a Bronx-based artist whose effervescent and craggly artworks reflect his uniquely positive energy, as well as the frenetic beat of New York City. “I make art to make people happy, to make me happy. By expressing your feelings and sharing them, you get happy and make other people happy.”
First and foremost, Diogeneis identifies as an observer. “I am observing all the time. Looking at different shapes and textures.”
Diogeneis’ colored pencil portraits depict everyone from Rihanna and Michael Jordan to Domino – a friend’s basset hound – all with a tone of reverence, play, and curiosity. His bold, wobbly lines and swaths of vibrant color collapse three-dimensional space into patterns that nearly vibrate off the page. Diogeneis’ figures retain a clear resemblance to their source as they transmute from living beings into icons.
In his sculptural work, Diogeneis realizes his maximalist impulses by stacking bright colors and scavenged materials in combinations that harmonize despite their superabundance. As an artist with a disability, Diogeneis values the way he experiences the world differently. He vows to “never stop changing the way I draw.”