Fabio Viale

Fabio Viale is today one of the most internationally recognized Italian sculptors, among those who have made "levare," that is, sculpture in marble, their field of action. Viale has been able to introduce the cipher of contemporaneity on forms related to classical art, in a way so personal and impressive that he has become the progenitor of a nouvelle vague of artists in which the citation of tradition is the stimulus for works of absolute beauty and significance. His, however, is never a simple citationism, more typical of the postmodern, if anything, in him is exalted ability to translate the persistence of forms into the narrow contemporary, pursuing a second beauty, identifying a second, further, primarily aesthetic meaning of works that already existed and would seem to have said it all, fulfilling in full their essence. And instead, think of the ancient busts or tattooed fists that are perhaps among his most famous works, or equally famous are the sculptures that look like styrofoam (the Nike or the Skull) and instead are carved in hard marble, or the tires, also in marble, that deceive the viewer's eye so much is the perfection of execution recalling soft rubber.