Ultra-Violette
by Ben Davis
"Banks Violette: Untitled," May 27-Oct. 2, 2005, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10021
The first thing you see when you enter the Whitney's first-floor project gallery is the 16 x 20 foot recreation of a burned-out church, slightly elevated atop a gleaming, mirror-like black stage. The beams of the structure are zombie white, gashed here and there, made of salt bonded with polyurethane resin. In places, the structure is broken, the jagged ends rimmed with black as if charred.
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