Dave Vescio

About Dave Vescio

Dave Vescio, a visual artist originally from Los Angeles and now based in Dallas, engages with contemporary photography through his practice, Spiritography. This photographic, object-based approach explores non-human presence within post-industrial material culture. Vescio's first body of work, "The Spirits of Route 66" and "They're Always Watching Me," arises from his travels along the historic Route 66 corridor. Through close encounters with discarded vehicles, industrial debris, and urban materials, he captures the latent identities and watchers embedded within these forgotten relics.

Vescio's work navigates the intersection between abstraction and portraiture. The work often registers first as abstraction, with vibrant color, gestural movement, and textured surfaces reminiscent of abstract painting. However, sustained observation reveals faces, figures, and other non-human identities emerging from the marks already present within the material. These images are discovered rather than constructed. Vescio frames the photograph in-camera, does not crop, composite, add, or remove visual elements, and limits post-production to tonal and color adjustments, emphasizing themes of entropy, memory, and non-human presence within transformed materials.

Educated in Television Production, Electronic News Gathering, and Theatre Arts at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Vescio's background enriches his photographic work. His experience as a television photojournalist and his performances in Paul McCarthy's experimental video works, "CSSC" and "DADDA," commissioned by Hauser & Wirth and exhibited at The Montalbán Theater in Hollywood (2019) and The Journal Gallery in Los Angeles (2026), both during Frieze Los Angeles week, inform his understanding of observation, presence, and the photographic encounter. Vescio's finished works are photographic objects, with metal-origin pieces produced using archival dye-sublimation on ChromaLuxe HD aluminum, and select non-metal works presented on museum-grade acrylic, creating a deliberate connection between the photographed subject and its material presentation.

Vescio's work has been recognized by the International Photography Awards and the International Color Awards, and his pieces have been featured at art festivals such as the Main St. Fort Worth Arts Festival and the Bayou City Art Festival Downtown. His editions are intentionally limited to two to five prints. Spiritography bridges abstract visual experience and post-human portraiture, exploring non-human presence within post-industrial material culture.