BY FABIO VIALE
Text iloboyou.com
Fabio Viale covers marble classical sculpture with tattoos inspired by Japanese and Chinese aesthetics, creating an astonishing encounter between two cultures, but also with more modern tattoos.
Fabio Viale is an Italian artist who aims to show us a new way of looking at the old and familiar. Using the bodies of famous sculptures such as the Venus de Milo as his canvas, the artist decorates them with realistic tattoos inspired by the patterns born by Russian gangs and the Japanese Yakuza. The end result delivers a sharp contrast between the traditional purity associated with white marble statues, and the dark and gritty connotations of the contemporary body art they bear.
Fabio Viale also reveals his talent with impressive sculptures, transforming marble with a realistic effect of polystyrene, rubber or paper in other works.
Despite the difficulty of handling marble, there is a translucency in the material that gives any marble sculpture a visual depth beyond its surface and this evokes a certain realism in the works created. This is the case with Fabio Viale as his works do not seem to be created from bulky marble but rather seem like they have been created by lightweight styrofoam.
‘It’s fantastic the way he works with marble, a traditional and almost holy material’, says Pietro Gagliardi, Fabio Viale’s art dealer. ‘He interprets the marble in such a way that something modern and contemporary comes out of it’.
Fabio Viale started working with marble at the age of 16 and never stopped: ‘I’m still fascinated by it. The material allows me to create the shapes that I envision. There’s nothing I can’t do with it’.*