Banks Violette

Banks Violette Exhibited at The Saatchi Gallery

Banks Violette
Hate Them

2004

polystyrene, polyurethane, tinted epoxy, wood, steel, drum stands and hardware

152.5 x 366 x 244 cm

Banks Violette’s Hate Them replicates a nightmarish teenage psyche. His minimalist suggestion of a rock band hovers above a sound stage with barbaric awe. Bank’s gnarlish fang-like forms encapsulate a testosterone-fuelled aggression with an iconic and primal flair. Drawing correlations between subculture and theatre, Violette addresses Black Metal as a performative act without clear limitation: a unique spectacle where artistic meaning is often literalised into real belief. Fuelled by its associations with violence, satanism, racism, and nationalism, Violette uses the Goth genre as both symptom and cause of individual immorality and social breakdown.

Banks Violette
Black Hole (Single Channel)

2004

sculpture and wall drawing mixed media

45.7 x 213.4 x 214.4 cm

Death metal, ritual murder, and teenage suicide are mere starting points for Banks Violette; his gothic installations construct operatic analyses of the dark side of American culture. In works such as Black Hole, Violette aptly portrays this phenomenon of excess. Heavy-metal aesthetics become a mirror of youth culture anxiety, an adopted language compensating and empowering sensations of immense sorrow and despair. Citing examples where musical lyrics become instigating factors to real-life violence, Violette refers to an over-identification with fiction where artistic expression exceeds critical confinement, and fantasy and reality are blurred. Black Hole lingers on this edge of transition: its aestheticised destruction offers both horrific contemplation and potential for misuse.

Banks Violette
SunnO))) / (Repeater) Decay / Coma Mirror

2006

Steel, hardware, plywood, paint, fibreglass, tinted epoxy, salt, resin

Dimensions variable

Banks Violette’s Untitled takes as its origin a performance by the rock bank SunnO))) which the audience was allowed to hear, but not to see. Casting their stage equipment in salt, Violette’s Untitled comprises the only visual documentation of this event. Through its strange crystalline and ghostly presence, Untitled captures the lingering aura of ominous phenomena. Reminiscent of the biblical story of Sodom, Violettle’s contemporary ‘pillars’ of salt give aftermath testimony to forbidden indulgence. During SunnO)))’s performance, the lead singer was encased in a black coffin. Represented as a shard-like abstraction, an ebony form takes centre stage as a mysterious monument of dissolution.

Banks Violette's Biography

1973
Born in Ithaca, New York

Lives and works in New York

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2010
Gladstone Gallery, New York, USA

2009
drawings, Team Gallery, New York
La Conservera, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Murcia, Spain
Museum Dhont-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium

2008
Maureen Paley, London, UK
Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, Belgium
Focus: Banks Violette, Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth, Texas, USA

2007
Gladstone Gallery and Team Gallery, New York, USA
Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg, Austria

2006
Standard, Oslo, Norway.
Maureen Paley, London, UK

2005
on black wings / six-channel bleed, Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, Belgium
Untitled, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA

2002
Arroyo Grande, 7.22.95, Team Gallery, New York, USA

2000
Team Gallery, New York, USA

TWO-PERSON EXHIBITIONS

2006
gallery.sora, Tokyo, Japan (with Gardar Eide Einarsson)

2005
Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York, USA (with Walter Redinger)

2004
MW Projects, London, UK (with Nigel Shafran)
Penteholocaust / The Sixty-Sided Stone of the Androgyne, Peres Projects, Los Angeles, USA (with Matt Greene)

2003
An Enquiry into those Kinds of Distress which excite agreeable Sensations (1773): Slater Bradley & Banks Violette, Team Gallery, New York, USA

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2009
Elevator to the Gallows (curated by Banks Violette and Gerald Matt), Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna,
Austria (travelling to DA2. Domus Artium, Salamanca)
The End (curated by Eric Shiner), The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh.
New York Minute, Macro Future Museum, Rome, Italy

2008
GSK Contemporary, Part II: Collision Course, Royal Academy of Art, London, UK
Sack of Bones, Asia Song Society, New York, USA
Extra-Light, Point Ephemere, Paris, France
For what you are about to receive, Gagosian Gallery, Red October Chocolate Factory, Moscow, Russia
Murder Letters, Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon, Portugal
That was then…This is now, P.S.1, New York, USA
The Great Transformation-Art and Tactical Magic, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Germany

2007
Collection Show, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Switzerland
Disorder in the House, Vanhaerents Art Collection, Brussels, Belgium
The Eclectic Eye, Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans, USA
When We Build Let Us Think That We Build Forever, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle, UK
My Sweet Sixteen Party, Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, Belgium
The Shapes of Space, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA
U.S.A. Today, The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
Bastard Creature, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
LAST ATTRACTION NEXT EXIT, Max Wigram Temporary Exhibition Space, London, UK

2006
Cosmic Wonder, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, USA (curated by Betty Nguyen)
Trial Balloons, MUSAC, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Leon, Spain(curated by Agustin Pérez Rubio, Octavio Zaya, Yuko Hasegawa)
Youth of Today, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
DARK, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands
I Love My Scene: Scene One, Mary Boone, New York, USA
The Image Is Gone, Galerie Lisa Ruyter, Vienna, Austria
The Monty Hall Problem, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, USA
While Interwoven Echoes Drip into a Hybrid Body, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich, Switzerland
U.S.A. Today, Royal Academy, London, UK

2005
Thank You for the Music, Sprüth Magers Projekte, Münich, Germany
Blankness is Not a Void, Standard, Oslo, Norway
Bridge Freezes Before Road, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, USA
La Beauté de l’Enfer: works on paper, Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, Belgium
Greater New York, P.S.1, New York, USA
Suburbia, Galerie Lisa Ruyter, Vienna, Austria

2004
The Black Album, Maureen Paley, London, UK
The Ice Age, Team Gallery, New York, USA
Beginning Here: 101 Ways, Visual Arts Gallery, New York, USA
Art and Illusion: Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation, Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Pepperdine University, Malibu, USA
Power, Corruption and Lies, Roth Horowitz, New York, USA
Noctambule, alternative space, Paris, France (under the auspices of D’Amelio Terras Gallery, New York)
The Whitney Biennial, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA
Scream, touring exhibition: Anton Kern Gallery, New York & Moore Space, Miami, USA

2003
Kult 48 Klubhouse, Deitch Projects, Brooklyn, USA
Flesh and Blood, Michael Steinberg, New York, USA
A Matter of Facts, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York, USA (curated by Clarissa Dalrymple)
Back in Black, Cohan Leslie and Browne, New York, USA
Melvins, Anton Kern Gallery, New York, USA
The Return of the Creature (The Continuing Saga of Elementalism, … Conceptual Practice and Romanticism After Robert Smithson, … New Quasi-Cinemas, … and Post-Punk Existentialism), Künstlerhaus Palais Thurn und Taxis Gartnerhaus, Bregenz, Austria

2001
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, Contemporary Arts Center, Atlanta, USA
Ghost Stories, Sandroni-Rey Gallery, Venice, Los Angeles, USA
Learned America , P.P.O.W., New York, USA
Diversity Plus: Emerging Artists in a Rapid World Visual Arts Museum, New York, USA

2000
Summer with Friends, Team, New York, USA
Two Friends and So On, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, USA
Columbia University M.F.A. Exhibition, alternative space, Brooklyn, USA

1999
Rachel Lowther and Banks Violette, Momenta Art, Brooklyn, USA

1998
Group Show, Visual Arts Gallery, New York, USA

1997
Group Show Visual Arts Gallery, New York, USA
MX Group Show, Lower East Side Community Center, New York, USA