 | This biographical article is written like a résumé .(December 2017) |
Banks Violette | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1973 |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | School of the Visual Arts, Columbia University |
| Known for | Sculpture, Installation art |
| Movement | New Gothic Art |
Banks Violette (born 1973) is an artist based in Ithaca, New York. [1]
Violette was born in Ithaca, New York and studied at the School of the Visual Arts in New York earning at BFA in 1998, and graduated with an MFA from Columbia University in 2000.
 | This section possibly contains original research .(August 2010) |
I'm interested in a visual language that's over-determined, exhausted, or just over-burdened by meaning. The heavy-handed one-to-one of 'black-equals-wrong' is incredibly interesting to me -- less as something that has a meaning in itself, but more in how those visual codes can somehow become reanimated. That's constant throughout my work. All those images are like zombies -- they're stripped of vitality, yet sometimes they get life back in them ... and. like zombies, usually something goes wrong when they wake up again.
— Banks Violette [2]
Violette's work has shown internationally at galleries and museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Museum Boijmans van Beuningeng in Rotterdam, the Migros Museum in Zurich. He participated in the "Greater New York" exhibition at PS1 Center for Contemporary Art in New York City and "USA Today" at the Royal Academy in London. His work is featured in several prominent collections including the Musee d'Arte Moderne et Contemporain Geneva, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Saatchi Gallery in London, and MOMA and the Guggenheim Museum, both in New York City. He is represented by Team Gallery in New York City, Blum & Poe in Los Angeles, Maureen Paley Gallery in London and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg.
Death metal, ritual murder and teenage suicide are starting points for Banks Violette. His work is notable for combining references to excess from youth culture with minimalist form, often using glossy black and ghostly white materials. Citing examples where musical lyrics become instigating factors to real-life violence, Violette refers to an over-identification with fiction, where fantasy and reality are blurred. For example, for his first solo museum exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, May 27-Oct. 2, 2005, Violette erected a life-sized recreation of a burned-out church on a black stage, inspired by an image from the cover of a black metal record and surrounded by a 5.1 surround score composed by Thorns Ltd consisting of a varied backdrop of ambiences ( www.thornsltd.no ). According to Violette, the inspiration of the piece was a series of instances of arson committed by rival metal enthusiasts in Norway, which culminated in the 1993 knife murder of Øystein Aarseth, guitarist of the black metal band Mayhem by Varg Vikernes of the band Burzum. [3]
In 2006, Violette curated a group show titled, War on 45 / My Mirrors are Painted Black (For You), which included fellow heavy-metal nihilistic artists. The show included a black rhombus painting entitled For Steven Parrino / FTW (Dark Matter) made by Violette, in collaboration with Gardar Eide Einarsson, and dedicated to the influential dead artist Steven Parrino. [4]
Violette continues to make work, frequently using collaboration as a springboard for his new installations. Stephen O'Malley of Sunn O))) provided the soundtrack for Violette's 2007 double show at Team Gallery and Gladstone Gallery in New York City. [5]
Violette's work has been described, by Francesca Gavin, as New Gothic Art. [6]
The Young British Artists, or YBAs—also referred to as Brit artists and Britart—is a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London in 1988. Many of the YBA artists graduated from the BA Fine Art course at Goldsmiths, in the late 1980s, whereas some from the group had trained at Royal College of Art.
The Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art and an independent charity opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985. Exhibitions which drew upon the collection of Charles Saatchi, starting with US artists and minimalism, moving to the Damien Hirst-led Young British Artists, followed by shows purely of painting, led to Saatchi Gallery becoming a recognised authority in contemporary art globally. It has occupied different premises, first in North London, then the South Bank by the River Thames, and finally in Chelsea, Duke of York's HQ, its current location. In 2019 Saatchi Gallery became a registered charity and begun a new chapter in its history. Recent exhibitions include the major solo exhibition of the artist JR, JR: Chronicles, and London Grads Now in September 2019 lending the gallery spaces to graduates from leading fine art schools who experienced the cancellation of physical degree shows due to the pandemic.
Rebecca Jane Warren is a British visual artist and sculptor, born in Pinhoe, Exeter. She is particularly well known for her works in clay and bronze and for her arranged vitrines. The artist currently lives and works in London.
Daniel Colen is an American artist based in New York. His work consists of painted sculptures appropriating low-cultural ephemera, graffiti-inspired paintings of text executed in paint, and installations.
David Ratcliff is a painter based in Los Angeles. His work involves spray painting on collages using appropriated images.
Barbara Gladstone is an American art dealer and film producer. She is owner of Gladstone Gallery, a contemporary art gallery with locations in New York and Brussels.
Maureen Paley is the American owner of a contemporary art gallery in Bethnal Green, London, where she lives. It was founded in 1984, called Interim Art during the 1990s, and renamed Maureen Paley in 2004. She exhibited Young British Artists at an early stage. Artists represented include Turner Prize winners Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Gillian Wearing and Wolfgang Tillmans. One thing in common with many of the artists represented is their interest in addressing social issues.
Oracle is an EP by American drone metal band Sunn O))). The track "Orakalum" was recorded as part of a collaboration between the band and sculptor/installation artist Banks Violette for an exhibit at London's Maureen Paley gallery. The exhibit took place in two rooms: one with a black stage where the band recorded "Orakulum" with Attila Csihar locked inside a white coffin, and one with a white replica of the band's stage set up cast out of salt and resin with a destroyed black coffin. The audience was locked outside for the performance and let inside after the band left "to generate a feeling of absence, loss and a phantom of what was."
Robert Prime was a gallery in London in the late 1990s. Founded by Tommaso Corvi-Mora and Gregorio Magnani, it held the first exhibitions in London of artists including Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Isa Genzken, Philippe Parreno and General Idea. It also hosted the first exhibitions of artists including Rachel Feinstein, Martin Maloney, Vydia Galstaldon and Jean-Michel Wicker. The gallery closed in December 1999.
Maaike Schoorel is an artist based in London.
Albert Paley is an American modernist metal sculptor. Initially starting out as a jeweler, Paley has become one of the most distinguished and influential metalsmiths in the world. Within each of his works, three foundational elements stay true: the natural environment, the built environment, and the human presence. Paley is the first metal sculptor to have received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Institute of Architects. He lives and works in Rochester, New York with his wife, Frances.
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu are artists living and working collaboratively in Beijing since the late 1990s.
Bozidar Brazda is an artist. He lives and works in New York City.
Marnie Weber is an American artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. Her work includes photography, sculpture, installations, film, video, and performances. She is also a musician.
New Gothic or Neo-Gothic is a contemporary art movement that emphasizes darkness and horror.
Norbert Schoerner is a German photographer and filmmaker based in London.
Gavin Brown's enterprise was an art gallery with venues in New York City and Rome owned by Gavin Brown between 1994 and 2020. In 2020, it merged with Gladstone Gallery.
Clarissa Dalrymple is an independent art curator who lives in New York, New York. Dalrymple is credited with having curated early exhibitions of contemporary artists in the United States including Christopher Wool, Ashley Bickerton, Collier Schorr, Haim Steinbach, Nayland Blake, Michael Joaquin Grey, Jorge Pardo, Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Gary Hume, Rachel Whiteread, Neo Rauch, Adam McEwen, Nate Lowman and Ryan Sullivan.
Mark Francis is a Northern Irish painter living and working in London, England.
Steven Parrino (1958–2005) was an American artist and musician associated with energetic punk nihilism. He is best known for creating big modernist monochrome paintings that he violently slashed, torn or twisted off their stretchers. He died in a motorcycle traffic accident in Greenpoint, Brooklyn at the age of 46.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
