SPILL FEATURE: A MANY SPLINTERED THING – A CONVERSATION WITH JOEY DAMMIT!

A MANY SPLINTERED THING

A CONVERSATION WITH JOEY DAMMIT!

The contemporary Toronto art scene is the most exciting it has been in recent memory. Maybe the invention of the cellphone has gone too far. Still, it has provided an incredible number of artists with the ability to share their work with the world in a relatively accessible manner. Everybody has a cellphone, which means everybody automatically has a tool that they can use to publish their art. A visceral, sprawling landscape means visceral, sprawling works of art, and no one in the Greater Toronto Area understands these sensibilities within their artistry like Toronto-raised visual artist and painter extraordinaire, Joey DAMMIT! Seamlessly keeping in touch with the hard-hitting waves of mind-numbing pop culture and contemporary scenes, as well as his own unique style, ‘Manic Montage,’ DAMMIT! is something of a legendary figure within the Toronto art scene. He’s been around for decades, and his work has received monumental acclaim from local and international publications alike. DAMMIT! is coming back bigger and better than ever this year, with a brand-new exhibition of pieces under the collection title, A Many Splintered Thing. To make things even more exciting, this will also serve as a launch party for DAMMIT!’s upcoming book of the same name. In anticipation of the event, which will take place from February 25 to March 3, Joey DAMMIT! was more than happy to shine the light on his past exhibitions, inspirational art over the ages, as well as his mental health activism and personal creative process.

“I like promoting my shows, and myself obviously. Especially now, with social media, you have to promote. When I started out, I was doing colour posters. I used to be a singer in some bands back in the ‘80s. We were kind of known for putting posters up all over the city, advertising for the band. So, I continued that when I became Joey DAMMIT!”

Joey DAMMIT! is a creative who can find the art in anything, and likewise, he can find inspiration for art in anything. His trademark style, ‘Manic Montage,’ has been said to be heavily influenced by Trent Reznor’s film score work, as well as David Fincher’s seminal detective film, Se7en. One may immediately assume that it would be difficult to translate specific inspiration across artistic mediums, but for DAMMIT!, it’s something that happens quite naturally.

“I think when you’re so influenced by film and music, it’s not something that’s done on purpose but done through osmosis, really. I love those mediums so much that you can’t help but absorb film, especially because I’m a visual artist. To this day, I can’t do artwork without having music on incredibly loud. I’m lucky enough to live in a place that was built, I think, in the early ‘70s, so the walls are concrete-thick. In all the years I’ve been here, I’ve never gotten a complaint about the music being too loud. However, I really do see my artwork as being a visual medium in the same way that movies are. I look at the canvas, especially when it’s finished, like somebody paused a movie during a really great scene. It’s almost because of the collage and the mixed media, it almost urged these inspirations onto the canvas itself.”

Looking back on his past exhibitions, with a specific focus on his most recent series in 2024, Heroes and Heretics, Joey DAMMIT! shared some insight into his personal stages of preparation, as well as his love for the environment and atmosphere of an art exhibition in general. In terms of intimacy and connection, Joey DAMMIT! is a gigantic fan of the practice, as some of his most dearly held moments have come from inside of these areas.

“It was very great because I was being represented by the Tarantino Belli Gallery. It was a terrific, very successful show. I had gone through a long period of not having shows. I have a long history of depression that lasts for a very long time, then goes away for a few years, and then comes back. This was my first gallery show since the Summer of 2016, aside from a few small things. I was surprised by not only the attendance and the sales, but especially the interest in it. There was a lot of interest in it. They [Tarantino Belli Gallery] put together a show very quickly. It was a pop-up show, so, I didn’t think there was any time to promote and get people there. But it was very, very successful. If you’re semi-depressed, that’s a good way of getting out of it. I got a cat, and a gallery show.”

Riding on the thrill of his first exhibition in nearly a decade, DAMMIT! was bursting with creativity and eager to share more of his visual work with the world at large. He began sketching and drawing consistently, effectively crafting enough work that would fit the criteria for his latest exhibition, A Many Splintered Thing, which he would create in his sketchbook. After various conversations with his small press publisher, they decided that there was more untapped creative potential to this project than what immediately met the eye. “It started getting a lot of notice, so, the publisher asked me if I’d be interested in doing a book. So, the show, which is also called A Many Splintered Thing, is my first show since Heroes and Heretics, but also, it’s the launch of my book, featuring 100 full colour illustrations, and it’s going to be a large gallery show. It will take new pieces and works from the last show. A Many Splintered Thing will be a greatest hits album, but it’ll be a double album, and the first three sides of that album are new work, from 2023 to 2025, and the fourth side will be a greatest hits; it’ll be new work and a retrospective. It’s going to be an extension of Heroes and Heretics; there will be some paintings from that show, what’s left. I got lucky, I sold half of the paintings that were up on those walls.”

As much as Joey DAMMIT! has learned to adapt to social media and remain in touch with the art scenes of the moment, he will never forgive social media and smartphones for not allowing people to reach into their screen and physically interact with his artwork. Anyone who has been to one of DAMMIT!’s talks or exhibitions knows that he is an inherent fan of art interaction; he wants you to not just look but to touch as well.

“I went to college for graphic design and advertising for three years. It got to a point where I wanted to draw again. I don’t think people saw that side of me; they just thought, ‘Oh, he’s a collagist,’ and, being an artist, I had to show that I can draw and paint. I took some of those illustrations and ideas and moved them onto large canvases. There’s going to be collage in there, but there’s also painting. I love texture, and the comment that I got most during the last show was, ‘I had no idea this is what was there.’ I always encourage people to touch the art, because you won’t break it, and people like to touch it because it’s much more three-dimensional than when they see it on my website or social media. I’ve taken the ideas of the illustrations and moved them onto the canvas, then used collage at the same time. So, you have an image, and a background, which is sometimes painted over. So, when you walk into the gallery, people touch it and realize everything that’s going on in the background.”

DAMMIT! has always been attracted to communal spaces where people gather to bask and rejoice in the glow of art. As he reflects upon his teenage years, and the time he spent making music in ‘hairspray bands,’ it’s easy to see where DAMMIT! began to develop his love for art as a visual medium, and the creative potential it was constantly bursting at the seams with.

“As a teenager, I was getting into that kind of stuff. I couldn’t play an instrument to save my life, and I’m not even sure I could sing, but I could fake it well enough. I loved writing lyrics; the songwriting was always my favourite part. It was scary getting on stage; it still is. I suffer from social anxiety, which comes with depression. People are surprised because I’m out here all the time and doing all of these shows, but you’d be surprised how many shots of Jack Daniels I have to do before I start meeting and greeting all of these people. I think a lot of creative people will tell you the same thing.”

DAMMIT! and I found ourselves in overwhelming agreement regarding how nerve-racking the five-minute window before any sort of public performance is.

Outside of his immediate work, Joey DAMMIT! is a heavily involved figure within the battle against mental health. Inside Canada specifically, he has a history of volunteering for and collaborating with CAMH, Mood Disorders Association, and Workman Arts, and is very outspoken with his own mental health struggles on his website, within interviews, and in the artwork itself.

“It’s so nice to see that the stigma is fading. When I first got diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder in 1991, that was not something anyone wanted to admit. I read some really great books by some really great authors on the subject. Maybe it’s because you have the ‘Van Goghs’, and I don’t want to say it was glamorous to have a mental health issue and be an artist, but it made it a lot easier. I decided really early on that I’m not going to hide my depression and would go out and volunteer to help people with it, but I would also talk about it publicly like this. I think it’s important, and it’s nice to see other people, who are much more famous than me, coming out to talk about it. I think life is way too short, and I wanted to leave some imprints. Not just through the visual arts. It came naturally to talk about it, and the more I was being interviewed, people weren’t afraid to ask me about it. So, the snowball grew as it rolled down the hill.”

DAMMIT! has never shied away from addressing topics of mental health, but when putting the issue into a lens and context that specifically addresses 2025, and the problems that young people have been facing, DAMMIT! expresses concern for the current generation. Not only due to the isolation that was faced by many during the start of the decade, but also due to the natural habit of doomscrolling that has taken the world by storm. With the insight of an artist with experience in mental health struggles, DAMMIT! offers insight into the issues.

“People have this idea that when you’re an artist and you’re depressed, you can create. Maybe when you’re manic, and you’re feeling euphoric, you can, but I’ll speak for myself and the people I know: no one is making great art when all they want to do is lie on the couch and watch terrible TV all day. I was reading an article last week that said, for young people right now, it’s a loneliness epidemic. I used to come home from school and go play hockey with my friends, and now you’re on the phone all the time, and you go home, and you go on TikTok and Instagram thinking, ‘great, I have a social life.’ That’s not true. I do a lot of reading, and that subject has come up a lot. I do a lot of artist talks at universities like U of T, talking about art, mental health, and the creative process.”

After a thorough and tender conversation with Joey DAMMIT!, there was one more burning question that the people have been dying to know. Both of these artists are heavily featured in his creative work and have been substantial influences on his own development as an artist. They’re also massive figures in pop culture, respectively: Lou Reed or Nick Cave? Without hesitation, he responded.

“Nick Cave. I met him at Indigo, just a little bit after Lou Reed passed away, while wearing a Joey DAMMIT! Lou Reed T-shirt, which I currently have up for sale on the website. He loved it. He said he had dinner with Lou Reed a week before he passed away, in New York. We were talking about it, he got kind of sad, then he said, ‘Joey, you would’ve paid a goddamn fortune to be a fly in the soup that I was eating while he and I were having a conversation. If you could only be a fly for a few minutes, that’s where you’d want to be.’” In short, that’s the best way to describe an interaction with Joey DAMMIT!; you go in with a certain set of expectations, then have your world enchanted by marvelous stories and unique creativity; it’s visceral art created by a visceral man, who consistently aims to make the world around him a better place.

The show itself will feature artwork and illustrations on canvas. It’s a different kind of series that has dark but humorous illustrations compared to the rest of DAMMIT!’s work. However, fear not, DAMMIT!’s creativity and artwork have never been more captivating than they currently are. The book of the same name, which will be launching alongside the gallery’s showing of A Many Splintered Thing simultaneously, will feature 100 full-colour illustrations. The Northern Contemporary Gallery is a large exhibition venue that will show DAMMIT!’s new work, created between 2023 and 2025, as well as a ‘greatest hits’ section for previously released works.

Joey DAMMIT!’s latest exhibition, A Many Splintered Thing, will take place between February 25 and March 3 at Northern Contemporary Gallery. The opening reception will take place on Thursday, February 26th, from 6-10pm.

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