Banks Violette

Japanese bound and beautifully printed in deep, dark, black ink on several kinds of paper, this volume documents New York artist Banks Violette's recent solo exhibition at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg, where he showed recent sculptures and site-specific installations made of metal, neon, varnish and glass. Calling upon Banks' goth sensibility, one of the kinetic sculptural works actually destroyed itself over the course of the exhibition; another was fabricated of deep-frozen elements. According to the esteemed independent curator and former Director of Exhibitions at London's Royal Academy of Arts Norman Rosenthal, "Violette's gothic installations are operatic analyses of the dark side of American culture. Violette's heavy-metal stylings become a mirror of the anxiety in youth culture, an adopted language compensating and empowering those who suffer sensations of immense sorrow and despair... Fuelled by its associations with violence, satanism, racism and nationalism, Violette uses the Goth genre as both symptom and cause of individual amorality and social breakdown."