Lot 3: Not Yet Titled (Microphone Stand), 2006

Not Yet Titled (Microphone Stand), 2006
Cast patinated bronze and copper. Installation dimensions variable; stand: 19 1/2 x 68 1/2 x 33 in. (49.5 x 174 x 83.8 cm), microphone: 9 x 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 in. (22.9 x 6.4 x 6.4 cm).  This work is stamped with the date “06” on the top leg of the stand.This work is from an edition of three.

 Team Gallery, New York

In a theatrical culmination of subculture and theater, Banks Violette transforms a microphone and stand reminiscent of a scene of Goth ridden teenage angst into an iconic sculpture.The microphone and stand are strewn on the floor in a gesture that calls to mind the violent climax of a rock show where the lead singer tosses the used goods to the ground, and the melancholy lingering after as the show has ended and the equipment is left there impotent.
The genesis of much of Banks Violette’s work “lies in the moments of a performance in which ‘an entire array of the mundane has a very real potential for altering its constitutive elements and becoming something else.’ For the artist, that process can result in two extremes: the event can be almost thaumaturgic, transfiguring the audience; or painfully ineffective, leaving the audience inert. In both instances there is an excess, in the former an excess of identification that exceeds the bounds of simple performance or fantasy, in the latter an excess of disappointment.” (S. Momim, Banks Violette, NewYork, 2005, p. 14).