Fabio Viale and His Marble Sculptures
Fabio Viale is an Italian sculptor well known for his marble creations. His most recent carving that has made headlines is his marble boat that actually floats and boats! I want to focus more on his recreations of classic sculptures but you can check out the marble boat here. Viale originally caught my attention on Instagram with his tattooed sculptures. Rather than creating his own works, Viale sees value in recreating famous sculptures to learn from the sculptors that came before him. What’s unique about Viales’ work is that he adds tattoos when he’s finished recreating these iconic marble figures which is aesthetically pleasing but also ground breaking.
Viale infuses the marble to create these tattoos rather than just painting onto the marble. He even worked with chemists to perfect the medium of infusing the marble with this unique technique.
The tattoos are often large scale, covering whole limbs or backs of his sculptures. On some sculptures he adds tattoos of other art pieces. One of his larger scale examples of this is his recreation of the Roman sculpture, Laocoön and his sons. Though Viale didn’t carve the sons, he stuck with just Laocoön, who he adorned with tattoos from his neck, down to mid thigh and onto his forearms.
For this piece he added tattoos of the seven deadly sins from The Inferno that was originally painted by Giovanni da Modena in the 15th Century. Viale’s version of Laocoön is missing his 2 sons which is brushed off by my source as a simple design aspect, but I think it’s more significant than that. In the myth of Laocoön he was killed along with both his sons by Posiden for trying to expose the roose of the Trojan horse. There are a few different versions of his myth but the ending in all of them is that Posiden is punishing Laocoön. Sculpting just Laocoön with tattoos of The Inferno I think is Viale showing Laocoöns struggle, the original sculpture was created as a symbolism of fear, suffering, and death with Poseidon’s serpents attacking the 3 men. Taking away the sons and adding The Inferno is a way to bring this story into the modern world and remind people about the lessons that mythology teaches us, Laocoön, all alone, suffering his punishment in the form of The Inferno, now renewed in the world’s mind. This is one style of dialogue that he creates with his sculptures, combining 2 historic art pieces in a modern way.
There is another style of tattoos that he does on these marble sculptures and that is when he adds tattoos that are more common today rather than famous art pieces. Viale uses the term ‘criminal tattoo’ and says,
“It is a meeting between life and death, between the sacred and the profane. A combination, the relationships between these two sets, results in a solid bond that creates energy: The preconception we have of classical beauty and the hardness inherent in a certain type of criminal tattoo provoke gasp and wonder.”
Fabio Viale
Viale uses the juxtaposition of the criminal tattoo (to use his terminology) against the elegance of marble sculptures which in itself is a striking image. They also have a similarity though. I’m not sure if Viale did this intentionally or if it’s a case of art meaning something different to everyone and every perspective but what I love about the criminal tattoo on marble is that they’re both classics. It’s no secret to anyone that prison tattoos have played a large role artistically in the tattoo industry and many prison tattoo designs have inspired classic tattoo designs. By putting them on marble, Viale is showing how tattoos have a place in the art world in their sameness with the marble. For many, tattooing and fine art seem so different. You might not typically think of tattooing the same way as going to an art gallery but at their roots it’s all the same, artwork and expression.
Viale’s work is not only amazing just to look at and take in, but what’s really striking to me is the place he is allowing tattoos to hold in the fine art world by forcing people that may not otherwise look twice at a tattoo to really consider the space they hold and their value. With the case of Laocoön by Viale many people wear their pain, struggles, and sins in their tattoos, allowing them to exist with mythology and such an ancient art like marble sculpting is a very important crossover that I hope is the future of tattoos: regarded with the artistry and respect that they deserve.
All photos were taken from Viales Instagram, check it out to see all his photos as I only selected a few! He also has an interesting interview on YouTube though it mainly focuses on the marble boat.
Sources:
- https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2020/04/fabio-viale-tattooed-sculpture/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laoco%C3%B6n_and_His_Sons
- https://www.instagram.com/vialefabio/
