Banks Violette lives and works in Brooklyn. Violette studied at Columbia University and the School of Visual Arts in New York, and has been well represented institutionally since the mid-2000s. The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York held a solo exhibition of his work in 2004. With his shiny black sculptures and his hyperrealist drawings – often linked to the New Gothic Art movement – he has recourse to Heavy Metal iconography on both the formal, aesthetic and the level of content. He exemplifies the symbolism of death and decay, fluctuating between beauty and cruelty, as in scenes used by the subcultures of black metal music. Here, the dark recesses and absurdities of American society provide the thematic basis of his work.