Banks Violette

My Review of Banks Violette's recent shows at Team and Barbara Gladstone as it appeared in the most recent issue of Artillery:

There’s something about Banks Violette’s strategy of melding high and low (Minimalist sculpture with the aesthetics of Death Metal) that I find a little obvious. It’s as if his high art credentials are meant to validate the cultural slumming while the sub-cultural cachet of death metal injects crusty old forms with a jolt of intensity or an air of authenticity. In actuality, it feels more like an exercise in stylistic genre-blending than invention - averaging out into something safe and accessible rather than remaining either rigorous or marginal.

It’s a given, anyway, that the monolithic and serial forms of Minimalism are symbolically kin to tombstones. Infusing Minimalist tropes with death metal theatricality is both obvious and almost campy in its literal take on the genre’s latent symbolism. Violette wants his art to be about big issues (death, morality, etc…), but the work’s marriage of these disjunctive forms is so jarring that it’s impossible to see beyond their function as art-historical or cultural signs.
A work featuring fluorescent tube lights hanging askew and large black wooden beams in a rectilinear formation is obviously meant to recall Sol LeWitt’s Variations on Incomplete Open Cubes (as well as Dan Flavin’s use of fluorescent tubes, and Donald Judd’s - or Liam Gillick’s – commercially fabricated objects), but these are intentional over-deliberate references rather than assimilations of those artists work. It also presents what seems like an obvious metaphor for entropy that doesn’t embody this quality in its presence: entropy as an image rather than a product of process. This effect makes his work feel more like commercial product than sculptural form. It also makes his work’s take on death (itself a product of entropy) seem a little tepid.

Violette’s work is best seen in comparison to other emerging artists working in similar territory. The Neo-Gothic werewolf sculptures of David Altmejd and the rock-inflected chaos of Anthony Burdin’s videos are, respectively, more complex, visceral, and less amenable to art-historical parsing. Violette also draw heavily on Damien Hirst’s melding of Minimalism with death-inflected subject matter but lacks the accessible clarity that Hirst, at his best, can achieve.
Despite his obvious intentions to deal with serious issues, his work’s most striking effect is art-historical. As an extension of Minimalist-derived techniques for using commercially available materials and procedures in art, Violette shows how the planes and surfaces of Minimalism could become the scaffolding of a rock concert set or the more complex articulations of musical equipment. The variegated knobs, swiveling arm, and tripod-like structure of a cymbal stand are closer in form to one of Judd or Flavin’s “specific objects” than we might normally think. Unfortunately, this formal innovation say too little about Violette’s ostensible content - death, morality, homicide, or death metal subculture - but it is an accomplishment, however short it falls from realizing his larger ambitions.

Kwik-E-Mart Article.

My Kwik-E-Mart article as in appeared in the most recent issue of Artillery:

Approached from the side-walk, the exterior of the new “Kwik-E-Mart” – a completely re-branded 7-11 on 42nd St. near Times Square - is a sight to behold. The unexpected appearance of this fictional store-front lifted from “The Simpsons” world and recreated in real life is thrilling and hilarious. A few other select 7-11s (about 15, nationwide), feature this total transformation, while all 7-11s nationwide will offer some of the related merchandize and product re-branding. Standing on the sidewalk, one can watch smiling, bemused strangers come out of the store with “Squishies” (the fictional “Slurpee” equivalent form “The Simpsons”) in their hands. In terms of the public’s non-dutiful appreciation, “Kwik-E-Mart” might have “The Gates” beat.

Inside, you can find numerous Simpsons related products, from Buzz Cola and Squishies to Krusty O’s cereal. Other 7-11 products have been promoted with Simpsons-styled advertising. Donuts, for example, are advertised with the slogan “Go Ahead, they aren’t called Don’t Nuts”. A photocopy of a hand-lettered sign reading “This is Not a Library!” is posted above the magazine rack, hovering neatly between cartoon and phenomenological worlds.

Cross-brand promotions of this type are familiar enough but I can’t think of a similar attempt to meta-fictionally re-brand an entire store. Inside the lofty confines of the art-world, some recent projects of related intent have included a promotional campaign for a fake, unfilmed, movie (“United We Stand” by Eva and Franco Mattes 0100101110101101.ORG), and the recent transformation of Oliver Kamm 5BE gallery into a replica of a standard New York City corner bodega by the artist Justin Lowe. More conceptually similar might be the work of Michael St. John who makes 3-D sculptures of 2-D cultural artifacts (both high and low): a Nike Swoosh, for example, or a head from a Basquiat painting.

At any rate, there’s something witty about a company embracing a fictional parody of its own brand as its branding. Let’s not forget, a lot of those satirical criticisms leveled at 7-11 and its ilk by the Simpsons writers are well on target: ever actually eaten a 7-11 pre-packaged sandwich? (Don’t). It’s possible to wonder if this project was a hard sell with the “suits”. The bizarre upshot of this is a sort of (semi-intentional?) truth in advertising: irony turning in on itself. Meanwhile, as I plunk down a buck-fifty for my “Squishie”, I realize that I don’t really mind. Mmm… Slurrrppppeeee…

A little disappointingly, they do eagerly break the fourth wall by offering merchandize of Simpson’s characters that wouldn’t have merchandize inside of the Simpson’s universe (Homer, Bart, etc..) in addition to offering merchandize that does or could exist in their world (Krusty O’s and Radioactive Man comic books). However, it’s interesting to see how certain things do (or don’t) shift unwittingly between the two worlds. Of course, taking it seriously enough to nitpick on this level belies a ridiculous willingness to go along with an absurd premise in the first place. Can promotional merchandizing be Brechtian?! By heightening our awareness of the function of product tie-ins, placement, display, design, promotion, visual marketing, and branding – not to mention irony - it does throw the whole dynamic of consumerism and exchange into a new light. Can this be art? Probably not, but it is pretty good entertainment.

At any rate, what carries the whole project is the overall visual élan with which the Simpson’s style has been tweaked, to good effect, for “reality”. The presentation, interestingly, falls a little short of cartoon-y. A “Buzz Cola” sign, for example, features a notably restrained use of gradients in its design, for example, but it’s also more schematic and simplified than the more familiar rococo graffiti of contemporary soft-drink packaging. (This is also turned out to be prescient, or timely, as Coca-Cola has recently announced plans to release a more flat and streamlined redesigned can.)

In the end, whatever it’s promotional or conceptual intent, this project’s effects turn on questions of what our world can look like. We’re so acclimated to thinking of cultural detritus as part of our environment, that we forget sometimes how arbitrary, subjective, or historical determined, the look of, say, a Slurpee cup might be – that these are works made by people. Can we ever know, in our own time, what our stuff actually looks like? Maybe, but Kwik-E-Mart, Squishie’s, and Buzz Cola et al offer a revealing example (in both their incongruity with and resemblance to their respective meta-fictionally isomorphic brands) of just how much we might always be taking for granted.