Black Market for Black Friday

By: Jeannette de Beauvoir, November 23, 2011

A. Jacob - Fragile Cargo

One of the more unusual galleries in Provincetown is the Helltown Workshop, which has an upcoming show featuring the work of Joey Mars, who agreed to sit down with me to talk about the “Black Market” show. Helltown Workshop is a gallery—and a concept, offering over 20 artists the freedom at a level that’s usually associated with museum shows.

InsideOUT: The upcoming show is called “Black Market.” Interesting name. Where did it come from, and what can we expect at the show?

Joey Mars: It's a play on Black Friday, that big shopping day the Friday after Thanksgiving, as well as the various black markets around the world that deal in the unusual and the contraband. We’ve all traveled around and have found ourselves in a "black market" of one sort of the other. So the show is a play on that street style, open trunk, “Here take a look at this, Mister” exhibit. Unusual works of art that can be given as gifts for the holiday season. If you are looking for something different for that special person or hard-to-please radical, Helltown Workshop's Black Market is the place to look.

I/O: Your website says that your art is "modern, expressionistic, gonzeaux, surreal art pieces." How would you describe your work?

Joey: Well, I have a few different styles that co-mingle as well as exist on their own. The cohesive nature would be a form of surrealism, I guess, expressed through paintings and drawings: a hybrid mash-up of underground comics, graffiti, pop art, expressionism, abstract art, and science fiction. Consciousness in nature coupled with a metamorphosis of a future, past evolution of plants, animals, technology and the spirit world. Sometimes it’s tight and illustrative and other times it's very fast, loose and abstract of the moment… which can take you through a spectrum of emotions from political to pure silly.

I/O: What inspires you?

Joey: The need to break new ground, the need to grow as an artist. The magic in this chaotic, symmetrical, fractal, organic, mysterious, developing world around us and the questions it asks us to ponder. Sometimes it’s as simple and abstract as wanting to see what would happen by putting certain colors next to each other.

I/O: Much of your work seems to me, anyway, to be looking back at the person looking at it. Is that true? How can the observer handle this communication?

Joey: Well I think the viewer of the art gets to get inside my head and see what I am looking at, looking for or envisioning. I am looking in on and creating this freak show of a party or this evolving garden of biotech rooted somewhere between the past, present and future. The art is trying to show me something usually. In Greek mythology, the "Fates" (past, present and future) all shared one eyeball and reported to Zeus. Perhaps we all get to be Zeus when we look at the art!

 

If you go…

Helltown Workshop

237 Commercial Street (inside Whaler’s Wharf), Provincetown

Open from 1-4 PM on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from November 25 to December 24

“Black Market” group show with an opening reception on November 25^th from 7 to 9 PM.