Exhibition - Banks Violette: American Standard

Organized by MoCA CT’s art advisory committee: Pamela Hovland, Robin Jaffee Frank, Lisa Kereszi, Richard Klein, and Kathryn Turley-Sonne.

Banks Violette: American Standard is made possible through the generosity of William + Jodi Felton and Thomas Hoffstetter / The Hofstetter Baron Group of Wells Fargo Advisors.

Banks Violette’s artwork explores moments when strong beliefs erupt from the realm of theory and become real. He mixes influences from postwar art, politics, religion, and pop culture, creating dark, ambiguous pieces that blur the line between widely accepted ideas and those that are feared or rejected. While his work has touched on many aspects of Western culture, this exhibition focuses on American identity, from its rise as an empire to its decline, capturing a uniquely American mix of pleasure and destruction.

This is Violette’s first major U.S. exhibition since 2008, featuring three large works at MoCA CT: a massive American flag sculpture, a video work from 2007, and a monumentally scaled gas station sculpture, which is Violette’s first readymade artwork. Each piece is presented in its own room, forming a loose, layered narrative about American excess, its discontents, and its unclear future.

The first work is a steel, aluminum and electric light sculpture of the American flag, resembling both a disassembled road sign and a stage set. Violette sees the flag not just as a national symbol but as a reflection of the systems and schema that constitute America as a sovereign nation, from its settler colonialist roots to its imperial present. His art often explores the psychological concept of jouissance-the indeterminate mingling of pleasure and pain—which finds purchase in the discussion of The United States-its splendor and grandiosity coupled with its abuses and profligacies.

The next room holds the remains of a gas station, salvaged and reassembled inside the museum. While its structure is broken and decayed, the fluorescent lights still glow, symbolizing the lingering energy of a past era of excess—the gleeful tradition of car culture and its debts coming due before our eyes.

The final piece is a ghostly video projection from 2007, originally shown on a curtain of water droplets. It features the winged horse from the old Tristar Pictures logo, frozen in a loop with its wings removed. This logo, tied to the neoliberal optimism of the Reagan and Thatcher era, becomes a haunting reminder of that economic belief system’s myriad unfulfilled promises. Two decades later, Violette presents it as a Pepper’s Ghost illusion-an antique method of holography popular in haunted houses and stagecraft—which elaborates on the original, vaporous manifestation of the work, while interposing the quintessentially American phantasms of the film studio and the theme park.

Together, these works tell the story of an America caught in a cycle of decay and revenance, its symbols and traditions rendered threadbare by cycles of upheaval, yet bound to an obdurate mythology of nationhood. The exhibition conjures fragments of a country haunted by its past—the exuberant twentieth century lingers in the present despite a political, technological and social ferment without precedent in its history.

Banks Violette (b. 1973, Ithaca, New York) is a contemporary American artist whose work engages with themes of destruction, decay, and the aesthetics of urban subcultures. With a background in heavy metal music, skateboarding, and the occult, Violette’s practice spans drawing, sculpture, installation, and video. His art explores the tension between beauty and violence, creating works that evoke the sublime and the macabre.

Violette received his M.F.A. from Columbia University in 2000 and his B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts in 1998. His solo exhibitions include notable presentations at Gladstone Gallery, New York (2018), the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2005), and Maureen Paley, London (2006). His work has been shown in prominent group exhibitions at institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Gagosian Gallery, and the Royal Academy, London.

Known for his use of dark materials and architectural forms, Violette’s work often examines the remnants of cultural symbols and the fragility of human existence. His detailed and gestural drawings explore desolate landscapes and symbols of alienation, while his sculptural works combine raw energy with unsettling beauty.

Violette’s works are held in the collections of major institutions, including The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His art continues to challenge conventional aesthetics, blending visceral imagery with cultural critique.