“I was just being a punk back then,” says Josué Del Fresco, reflecting on his young art school dropout days. “Dada, anti-art, just anti-everything.”
The artist, dressed in a colorful button-up shirt with spoons on it, the hair at his temples dyed a shocking yellow, recently turned thirty. In his solo show, DA ¡¡ BIG !! NADA, at Charles Adams Gallery in Lubbock, he says he’s looking back on his twenties, fulfilling ideas he’s had stored away in notebooks over the years and reminiscing about the “old times.” The ambitious and stylistically diverse work — from oversized sculptures of everyday objects to small painted sketches on paper — is naïve in sensibility, yet polished in execution and display. Taken all together, DA ¡¡ BIG !! NADA showcases an artist with vision and zeal, a strong sense of personal iconography, an experimental drive, and irrepressible humor. It’s not nothing, that’s for sure.
Installation view Josué Del Fresco, DA ¡¡ BIG !! NADA
“I grew up in the Guadalupe area across the tracks over there,” Del Fresco tells me, gesturing towards the North Lubbock neighborhood a stone’s throw from the downtown arts district. His youth was spent riding bikes, skating, and playing basketball. “[I] used to have hoop dreams,” he confesses. He was always good at art, he remembers, getting conscripted for group projects and asked to draw things for people in school. “I remember drawing people’s names and just doing stuff, little tags and whatnot,” he says. But he only really got into art after high school, getting an associate’s degree from South Plains College, and, later, taking classes at Texas Tech, where the academic setting grated on him.
His breakout exhibition took place in 2017 at the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts, under the name Josué Galvan. Long-time LHUCA curator “Linda Cullum gave me a show in the John Lott gallery,” he recalls. “She gave me a shot. She found me.” Working with Charles Adams Gallery owner Zach Morris in the frame shop and installing exhibitions in the gallery provided another opportunity for a big solo show.
Del Fresco goes by a handful of different names, attributing the works in his current show to various personae, such as Josué Galvan, Yösh Steelbonez, Boney Gumball, Ritchie Dagger, Ritchie Del, and others. “It’s just names you acquire,” he says. “Back in the early days, I wanted to be like Picasso, and have one name. I didn’t want to use my real name.”
Boney Gumball, Street Songs, 2024
One large painting features the name “BONEY” in old-school bubble-style lettering outlined in black paint over silver, sprayed on faux brick texture. “That’s really the city of Lubbock right here,” he says. “That’s the skyline.” In the corner, Del Fresco includes a “shadow man,” in homage to 80s New York street art legend Richard Hambleton.
Josué Galvan, Downtown ’81, 2016-24
The references are everywhere to be found. “I’m really, into the ‘80s,” he says, rattling off icons and influences like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, and Beat Street. One of his favorite pieces in the show, a wooden pallet painted like city buildings with a light bulb built in, he titled after the Basquiat movie Downtown ‘81. The dynamic spirit of ‘70s-‘80s-era New York inspires him: “during those times, everybody’s experimenting, everybody’s coming out, everybody’s together,” he says.
Yösh Steelbonez, Wronside, 2024
Lubbock’s underground scene likewise inspires Del Fresco. One canvas, Wronside, depicts the frenetic energy of a show at the eponymous house venue, with twisting, distorted figures outlined in bold black strokes, moshing in the pit, while a frontman shouts through a megaphone. Del Fresco includes a self-portrait in the lower right corner, with green skin, sunglasses, and a big grin. “That’s me, a fly on the wall,” he says.
In Charles Adams Gallery, Del Fresco arranged paintings across all of the movable walls, which he painted with streaks of blue to resemble glaciers. Using every available inch, the center of the gallery is stocked with mixed media sculptures, among them a very realistic giant purple hairbrush, replete with green hair between the bristles. It’s hard to imagine, but he made all these objects in his bedroom studio. “My room is way too small. Everything’s way too big,” he laughs. “It was hard to get this big old brush out of the door.”
Del Fresco, Ritchie’s Hairbrush (detail), 2024
His use of materials—drywall mud, spray texture, house paint, repurposed objects—derives from his experiences working with his dad remodeling houses. For one piece, he created a chunky sol-shaped wall piece with a convex security mirror in the center. “I knew I wanted a mirror in the show. Because, you know, people love to take pictures,” he says, referring to the selfie-loving crowds at Lubbock’s First Friday Art Trail.
At the opening of DA ¡¡ BIG !! NADA, Del Fresco offered visitors the chance to leave feedback cards in a suggestion box. “Funky, I like,” he says, reading one of the cards out loud. “The biggest nada,” said another one.
“Some people say everything’s so different, but it all works,” remarks Del Fresco of his work. “It’s all cohesive. It all goes together somehow.” I ask him what, if anything, he learned from his twenties, what lessons he would be carrying forward. He thinks about this for a time. “I feel like I don’t got it figured out. More patience, I guess,” he says eventually. “Sometimes I just go head in… Sort of feel like I rush into stuff.”
Josué Galvan, The Void, 2024
What’s next for Josué Del Fresco, then, following the success of this solo show? I ask. “Man, I want to fall off the Earth, go to my home planet,” he laughs. He had just gotten back from Marfa, where Chinati Weekend had left a big impression. “It inspired me,” he says. “I want to see more art.” First on the list? “Denver. Go see Blucifer,” he says, referring to Blue Mustang, the blue rearing bronco at the Denver airport, the legendary final and fatal artwork of Luis Jiménez, another art idol of his.
He also wants to continue focusing on his own work, hoping to find a studio “and really go at it.” He reflects on what he loves about making art: “That’s the freedom about it, having a crazy thought and just going for it. And make it big.”
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