Lot 201: burnout (fadeaway), vol.1, 2003

burnout (fadeaway), vol.1, 2003
Graphite on paper. 102.5 x 152 cm. (40 3/8 x 59 7/8 in). 

  New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Banks Violette, 27 May –2 October, 2005

  S. Momin, ed., Banks Violette, New York, 2005, p. 19 (illustrated)

 Team Gallery, New York; Private collection, New York

‘In a social environment where the government makes its own actuality, faith replaces scientific truth and the facts about torture and bombings are consistently obfuscated, the truth has become illusory and relative. With the difference between right and wrong being blurry, a moral vacuum appears. Within this anesthetized media-scape, young people feel politically disenfranchised...hurting themselves and others become a recipe for letting out such frustrations and feeling something real, rather than having no outlet at all.' (Taken from http://www.teamgal.com) A common contextual reference within his work, the horse's history and evolution and their relatives in their complex, intertwined, ongoing relationship with humanity provide a perfect connotation within Banks Violette's work. In this lot they are presented again in negative color, escaping, lost perhaps, a dreamlike state which the artist tries to capture recreating the feeling of lost teenage innocence tainted by dark events and the taboo reflection of melancholia.