“Street beauty and classic beauty”. Tradition and postmodernity in the marble bodies of Fabio Viale

After the season that saw conceptual and performative art as protagonist, an art that has hybridized multiple languages, giving primacy to the user’s freedom of interpretation and to the creation of meanings, rather than the value of form or the ideal of “Beauty” understood in the classical sense, it seems that today’s era is finally ready to propose “a return to classicism”, reinterpreted, however, in the light of postmodern parameters.
It is in this evolution, which led to the recovery of forms and tradition, that the art of Fabio Viale, an original sculptor who re-elaborates classicism from the point of view of a liquid society, fits. And here Cupid and psyche now becomes a cosmopolitan embrace between the snowy body of one and the dark, tattooed one of the other. One of the main characteristics of Viale is in fact the transposition of classical marble bodies into contemporary, plastic ones, and decorated with engravings and tattoos similar to those that adorn the bodies of our young people. Carnal images, imprinted on living limbs and on marble for the purpose of telling stories, as in the Maori and Siberian tradition, or which simply exhibit the limbs. Street beauty, characterized by decorations such as the tattoo that was originally “worn” by prisoners and convicts in the West, thus merges with classical beauty, which is defiantly scarred. Tradition, with Viale, comes out of museums and places that conceive culture as a monument to be contemplated, to become the protagonist on the streets, in urban contexts, so much so as to speak the language of young people who find their own symbolism imprinted on marble. The maxi-hand placed in the churchyard of the Cathedral of Arezzo thus becomes the emblem of the desperate search for a spirituality in contemporary man who, although absorbed by worldly fashions, continues to perceive a tension to infinity, a tension that, nevertheless , he no longer knows how to decipher, nor to fully embrace. The index finger, raised upwards, in fact indicates a plea addressed to the sky, a request for help that no longer sees the man humble enough to kneel. The sculpture that immortalizes the hand – a symbol, starting from the writings of Giordano Bruno, Homo Faber and ingenuity – is therefore the sign of the challenge that the man of our day, the secularized man, launches to that sky from which awaits answers.
Viale’s art therefore has an active character, rather than a contemplative and introspective one, and manages to stage strong messages through the mixture of sculpture and context. In this sense, it is not only the squares that welcome the artist’s works, but also closed and mystical places, such as Sant’Ignazio, where an original installation is set up, which exalts and aestheticizes the destruction: as has happened in the contexts of war, or near historic buildings damaged by earthquakes, the remains of crushed marble sculptures are placed on the ground. Among the fragments, however, faces and wings still intact can be seen, as if to indicate that, even in the chaos of destruction, beauty can be preserved and life can be reborn. The sculpture-installation placed at Sant’Ignazio is thus legible as a symbol of resurrection, since among the light, which kisses the heap of rubble, intact remains stand out that allow us to hope for a restart and that tear the heart, forcing the user to reflect on the dramatic events which, even today, condemn art and the collective cultural heritage to destruction, as happened, for example, in Syria. The art of Viale therefore manages to draw the public’s attention to the importance of classicism and does so in an original way, updating the traction and gaining visibility thanks to the dislocation of the sculptures in urban spaces. The title of the exhibition – “Aurum” – which is structured as a path of discovery for the city of Arezzo, involving squares and historical places, if on the one hand it alludes to the gold – emblem of the city -, on the other it indicates the aura of light that Viale creates around his works and, through them, in the places that host them, with the intention of making sculptures the means by which to implement a perceptive awakening in the viewer, who cannot fail to be captured by the majestic magnificence of those bodies and those motionless faces.
The “Aurum” exhibition, organized by the Guido d’Arezzo Foundation and the Municipality of Arezzo, in collaboration with the cultural association Le Nuove Stanze, will remain open until 30 September and is a mystical itinerary not to be missed.