Born on October 10, 1973, artist Banks Violette grew up in Ithaca, New York. After beating an addiction to crystal meth that caused him to drop out of high school, he earned his G.E.D. while working as a tattoo artist. He later attended the School of Visual Arts, New York, obtaining an undergraduate degree in the fine arts before receiving an MFA from Columbia University in 2000. His works, which might at first be characterized as drawings or paintings, include elements of sculpture and installation art and high and low culture, and are frequently tinged with a gothic or somber sensibility. When mounting an exhibition, the artist carefully chooses music that will complement his sculptures or drawings, creating an environment that is shaded with sinister or grim implications. He tends to focus on the darker aspects of human existence, frequently choosing as his models cultural icons that have perished through murder or suicide. His installation at the 2004 Whitney Biennial (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York) memorializes the 1994 suicide of idolized grunge-rock musician Kurt Cobain. By merging numerous mediums and focusing on the macabre and dark side of contemporary youth culture, even referencing Scandinavian death metal, Violette's oeuvre plays out as a simultaneous requiem for traditional arts and perverse fantasy of violence. At the 2004 Whitney Biennial, Violette exhibited glossy black sculptures and dark drawings that rang the death knell for grunge. A year later, in a solo exhibition at the Whitney, Violette exhibited a smaller-scale replica of a salt-coated, burned-out church, to which he choreographed a heavy-metal sound track composed by a musician who had been convicted of being involved in a ritualized murder of a rival band member. Though troubling and morbid, Violette's installations are nevertheless imbued with a sense of the contemporary sublime in their overwhelming theatricality; they are highly immersive, memorial environments that engage most of the viewer's senses, namely sight, smell, and hearing. Since 2007 Banks has started to shy away from staging grunge or murder scenes in his art and instead references the Minimalism of artists such as Sol LeWitt, Dan Flavin, and Robert Smithson by using broken grids, mirrors, and fluorescent tubes scattered in gallery spaces, along with his novel contributions of refrigerators and propane tanks. Violette has exhibited widely, having had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of Art (2005); Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway (2007); and Gladstone Gallery, New York (2007 and 2010). He participated in the Whitney Biennial (2004) and has had group exhibitions at the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (2007); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2007); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2007); and P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Queens, New York (2005 and 2008). The artist currently lives in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.