Exhibition | In Between by Fabio Viale, between the immortality of classical art and metropolitan tribalism
Today I will tell you about an art exhibition hosted at the Musei Reali of Turin. This is In Between by Fabio Viale.
You must know, that the history of sculpture has always been a history of archetypes, copies and reinterpretations: the absolute masterpieces of classical art that we still admire today in museums are often in fact second or third generation replicas of older originals, unfortunately lost.
Especially from the Renaissance onwards, this generally took place in a version devoid of any chromatic component, which was instead well present in ancient art, thus giving the work a detached and superhuman dimension.
With the In Between exhibition we find ourselves halfway between ancient tradition and innovation. Let’s see why together!
The exhibition
Every appearance is subverted in the new In Between exhibition at the Musei Reali, which for the first time in Turin are hosting the monumental works of Fabio Viale, who has gained international fame thanks to his extraordinary ability in transforming marble.
With the collaboration of the Poggiali Gallery, from 14 October 2021 to 9 January 2022 ten sculptures set up in Piazzetta Reale and inside the Royal Palace, in a path curated by Filippo Masino and Roberto Mastroianni inside the Royal Palace, testify to the continuous experimentation of Piedmontese artist.
Viale brings his sculptures to the Piedmontese capital which impress not only for their technical virtuosity, but above all for their ability to reinterpret the forms and themes of classical art in a contemporary key. Eternal models of beauty and metropolitan tribalism, tradition and innovation, a timeless past and the most current imagery come together in this exhibition designed to make public space and museum space interact and dialogue.
“Through the keys of wonder, technical virtuosity and creative reinterpretation – declares Enrica Pagella , Director of the Royal Museums -, the art of Fabio Viale pushes us to look with new eyes at the masterpieces of sculpture that populate our museums and ours imaginary: a stretched arc between past and future, between tradition and present experimentation, a tribute to the multiform potential of cultural heritage and an invitation to know and challenge it without prejudice.”
With In Between, the Musei Reali physically open up to the City of Turin: the exhibition is in fact partially accessible to Turin residents and tourists who can admire the series of famous tattooed statues in Piazzetta Reale. The large space in front of the Royal Palace presents itself as a perfect urban scenography for the works that, immersed in light, interact with the architecture and urban space, staging a portion of the contemporary imagination.
The route continues inside the Savoy residence with Cupid and Psyche, an unpublished work that dominates the Swiss Guard Hall and replicates Canova’s neoclassical masterpiece, distorting its interpretation through the tattooing of the female body with the wedding motifs of Middle Eastern brides, suggesting a very current reflection on the condition of women in the current geopolitical context around the themes of conquest, suffering and salvation.
“Cupid and Psyche is a sculpture I started working on several months ago, for which I had imagined some wonderful Japanese tattoos – says the artist Fabio Viale -. But in the light of recent events in Afghanistan, I felt that my project had to change radically to try instead to build a cultural bridge between the West and the Middle East, giving a voice to women not only from that country but from many parts of the world. From my point of view, this work represents a great novelty, because it allows me, through sculpture, to open a window on aspects of our actuality.”
Nella Cappella della Sindone, Souvenir Pietà (Cristo) del 2006 dialoga potentemente con una delle più importanti e misteriose icone del Cristianesimo.
Finally, in the Royal Armory, the original Lorica work is instead the invention of an old-fashioned armor in pink marble, perfectly wearable, made on the basis of a high-resolution three-dimensional scan of the body of the well-known rapper Fedez, which is it is loaned to a play on the theme of the heroisation of the public figure.
“For millennia – explains curator Filippo Masino – marble has transformed what is born humble and transitory into a noble and eternal substance, be it a human body, a cloth or a head of acanthus. Thanks to the gesture of Fabio Viale, the vitality of reality re-emerges from the stone surfaces, but not according to the usual metaphors: the decomposition of the statues of the Masters, the rewriting of meanings and the illusion of false materials stimulate our senses and our curiosity, and at the same time they are capable of conveying messages of universal value.”
“Fabio Viale’s works stage a portion of our collective imagination, in a dialectic between classicism and metropolitan tribalism, between innovation, tradition, reality and simulation, capable of delivering a universal image of the human and its forms – adds the curator Roberto Mastroianni -. In this intermediate space between the known and the unknown between being and becoming, Fabio Viale explores the eternal value of art and aesthetic practice, restoring our cultural heritage with the languages of the contemporary in a constant dialogue between present and past”.
The works
Let’s see together which are the ten works on display:
Piazzetta Reale:
Venus, 2021, white marble and pigments
Souvenir David, 2020, white marble and pigments
Laocoonte, 2020, white marble and pigments
Kouros, 2020, white marble and pigments
Torso Belvedere, 2020, white marble and pigments
Court of Honor:
Door Release, 2021, white marble and pigments
Staircase of Honor:
Venere Italica, 2016, white marble and pigments
Hall of the Swiss Guards:
Amore e Psiche, 2021, white marble and pigments
Chapel of the Shroud:
Souvenir Pietà (Cristo), 2004, white marble
Royal Armory:
Lorica, 2021, pink marble and pigments
The sculptures freely visible outside the Musei Reali
Piazzetta Reale
Piazzetta Reale becomes a perfect urban scenography for monumental statues immersed in light, which confront themselves with the royalty of architecture.
Like a copyist of the Hellenistic age, Viale faithfully reproduces some cornerstones of the history of art, which have been a source of inspiration for generations of artists and a yardstick for the same concept of beauty in Western culture.
On the skin and muscular systems of the Luni marble bodies he then overwrites extensive figurations derived from the colorful traditional Japanese tattoos, or from the monochrome ones rich in occult symbolism of the Russian underworld.
A visual short circuit of great power, which is not mere decoration: every motif for the tattoo is the result of an accurate search for consonances, semantic completions, capable of restoring its own complexity. This is the case of the bombastic Japanese motifs that the Venus de Milo exhibits with delicate modesty, or of the warrior friezes that seem to participate in the primordial fight of the Laocoon against sea snakes; or threatening criminal markings on the muscular back of the torso and head – falling to the ground in combat? – of the David.
Venus, 2021
Material: white marble and pigments
Model: Aphrodite of Milo
Dating: 150-125 a.C. /BCE
Location: Musée du Louvre, Paris
Work
The statue was found without arms on the Greek island of Milo in 1820. Its exhibition the following year in Paris caused a sensation, not only for its beauty: it was in fact the first statue in the collections to come directly from Greece, and the first to be exposed, although incomplete, of the arms, on whose original position the archaeologists had started a heated debate.
Souvenir David, 2020
Material: white marble and pigments
Model: David by Michelangelo Buonarroti
Dating: 1501-1504
Location: Gallerie dell’Accademia, Florence
Work
The famous statue was commissioned by the workers of the Cathedral of Florence, and placed in front of the entrance to Palazzo Vecchio as a symbol of the Florentines’ ability to prevail thanks to their intelligence and courage. When the statue was unveiled it aroused the admiration of all, immediately becoming a symbol of the city.
Laocoonte, 2020
Material: white marble and pigments
Model: Laocoon and his sons by Agesandros, Athanodoros, Polydoros
Dating: 40-30 a.C. / BCE
Location: Musei Vaticani, Vatican City
Work
The statuary group, which in the original also includes the two little children crushed by sea snakes, was found in 1506 in Rome on the Esquiline and immediately identified with the work described by Pliny as the masterpiece of the three famous sculptors of Rhodes. Julius II bought it for the Courtyard of the Statues of the Vatican, making it one of the most famous pieces.
To find out more about the original on which the work is based, I refer you to this article.
Kouros, 2020
Material: white marble and pigments
Model: Torso Gaddi
Dating: I secolo a.C. / 1st Century BCE
Location: Uffizi, Florence
Work
The work, derived from a prototype of the second century BC, is probably the fragment of a statue of Centaur, the mythological being half man and half horse. Well known in the Renaissance period, it was often depicted in paintings and used as a reference model by artists for its extraordinary anatomical rendering, considered so perfect that it was never replenished with the missing parts.
Torso Belvedere, 2020
Material: white marble and pigments
Model: Torso del Belvedere di Apollonios
Dating: I secolo a.C. / 1st Century BCE
Location: Musei Vaticani, Vatican City
Work
Perhaps a fragment of a sculpture depicting the Greek hero Ajax Telamon, and a copy of a second-century bronze original, the statue has been known in Rome since the fifteenth century and became one of the most admired ancient sculptures by artists to this day. Among others, it served to Michelangelo as a model for the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, and three centuries later for Eugène Delacroix’s Dante’s boat.
Court of Honor
Keeping Piazza Reale behind, passing the entrance door to the Royal Museums, you will find a tattooed hand on the left. What is it about? Of the reinterpretation of the right hand of the colossal statue of Constantine… only tattooed with symbols that recall those typical of the Russian underworld.
Door Release, 2021
Material: white marble and pigments
Model: The right hand of the colossal statue of Constantine
Dating: 313-324 d.C. / 313-324 CE
Location: Musei Capitolini, Rome
Work
One of the most important works of Late Antique Roman sculpture, the gigantic statue (total height 12 m) was an acrolith, it was made up of various marble parts assembled together with other materials. It dominated the Basilica that bears the name of the emperor himself, where it was found collapsed in 1486 to be taken to the Palazzo dei Conservatori, home to the city collections.
The works visible inside the Musei Reali
The tour continues at the Royal Palace in the Honor Staircase, in the Hall of the Swiss Guards, in the Armory and in the Chapel of the Shroud, places that become the scene of as many experiences of Fabio Viale’s research.
Staircase of Honor
In the Staircase of Honor you can admire the reinterpretation of the splendid Venus Italica by Canova.
Venere Italica, 2016
Material: white marble and pigments
Model: Venere Italica by Antonio Canova
Dating: 1804-1812
Location: Palazzo Pitti, Florence
Work
The statue was commissioned to the famous neoclassical sculptor to compensate Florence for the departure of the Venus de ‘Medici, which Napoleon had brought to the Louvre. Free interpretation rather than a copy of the original, it constitutes a manifesto of the neoclassical ideal of beauty, exemplified here in the model of the “Venus Pudica”, that is, surprised in her human nakedness before diving into a bath.
Hall of the Swiss Guards
A splendid work that reproduces one of the best known masterpieces of Western art, Cupid and Psyche, exhibited in one of the most beautiful rooms of the Royal Palace.
It is an unpublished work that was presented on the occasion of the In Between exhibition.
Fabio Viale interprets Canova’s great neoclassical masterpiece by transferring it to our days and underlining the still living value of the loving embrace, an emblem of conquest and salvation at the same time. The tattoos of the figure of Psyche, which stand out on the white marble, come from the tradition of Middle Eastern women to use these sensual graphics to decorate their bodies on their wedding day.
Amore e Psiche, 2021
Material: white marble and pigments
Model: Cupid and Psyche by Antonio Canova
Dating: 1787-1793
Location: Musée du Louvre, Paris
Work
Purchased by Gioacchino Murat, Canova’s famous masterpiece represents a scene from the myth handed down in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, and was a milestone in the sculptor’s career: he himself drew a second copy of the work in 1795 for Catherine II of Russia (today at ‘Hermitage), and at least five others were made by his pupil Adamo Tadolini with small variations.
Royal Armory
Here is one of the artist’s two unpublished works, Lorica (2021), significantly located in one of my favorite places in the Royal Palace, the Royal Armory.
Fabio Viale carved a wearable armor in pink marble, based on the bust of the well-known Italian rapper and influencer Fedez, after having performed an accurate three-dimensional live scan, on which he faithfully reproduced the singer’s tattoos.
You should know that the lorica musculata is one of the oldest types of combat or celebration armor of the Roman army and legions since the Republican age. Born in beaten leather (from which the Latin etymology lorum, which means “strip of leather”), for the commanders of higher rank it could be made of metal alloy, and had the function of protecting the chest and back, but not only: thanks to the underlining of the muscular features and the elaborate figurative kit, often rich in allegorical and mythological auspicious elements, it gave its owner the image of a war hero. Not surprisingly, it is with the lorica that the statues of leaders, princes and emperors are frequently depicted.
Thanks to the precision of the reproduction, the credible leather lacing technique replicated by ancient models and the tonality of the stone, Lorica is at the same time armor, sculpture but also a petrified human body, thus playing once again with our senses and taste. for illusionism.
Lorica, 2021
Material: pink marble and pigments
Model: FEDEZ, aka Federico Leonardo Lucia (Milano, 15 ottobre 1989)
Technique: Live laser and photogrammetric scanning
Chapel of the Shroud
The last stop is in the splendid Chapel of the Shroud, an extraordinary Baroque masterpiece by Guarino Guarini and a place that for centuries has been the heart of the contemplation of the most venerated and mysterious relic of Christianity, there is the work Souvenir Pietà (Christ).
It is the body of Christ removed from Michelangelo’s famous Vatican Pietà. Here the body was torn from the embrace of the mother, the Virgin Mary, to remain suspended in midair on a black marble base.
The artist wanted to express the tragedy of his martyrdom in this way, where the body of Christ seems abandoned to a higher will, bearing the burden of suffering that becomes a metaphor for human conditions and the salvation of the world.
The work can be related to his other work Souvenir Pietà (Mother) from 2018, in which the sculpture is instead mutilated by the Son.
Souvenir Pietà (Cristo), 2004
Material: white marble
Model: Pietà vaticana / Pietà by Michelangelo Buonarroti
Dating: 1497-1499
Location: Basilica di San Pietro in Vatican
Work
The statuary group was created by the Tuscan artist when he was in his early twenties, and was immediately considered a masterpiece. Through the extraordinary naturalness of bodies and expressions, he succeeded in revolutionizing a traditional iconographic model, thus giving us one of the most important artistic cornerstones of the Italian Renaissance.
Personal considerations
Did I like the exhibition? Overall I would say yes.
I found the works exhibited in Piazzetta Reale truly splendid and the work depicting Amore e Psiche in the Swiss Guard Hall was wonderful, as it was wrapped in the lights that illuminated the environment.
On the contrary, I didn’t much appreciate the placement of some works. Door Release (in the Court of Honor) and Venere Italica (in the Staircase of Honor almost intent on hiding from the city that can be glimpsed from the large windows) in fact seem almost “hidden” from the eyes of visitors.
While I was not particularly moved by Lorica, for heaven’s sake the execution of Viale is nothing short of exceptional, she possesses a truly divine mastery in marble processing, but the combination of the ancient lorica with the bust of Fedez I don’t know… I feel screeching something inside of me. Maybe it’s because in the end I remain a medievalist archaeologist. I will eventually leave the floor to my classicist colleagues if they want to add their opinion on the matter.
And finally I was not particularly thrilled, and I am very sorry, Souvenir Pietà (Christ), but the version with the Virgin Mary had not really excited me either. In fact, I find that Michelangelo’s work is so complete that it is difficult for me to see it broken down. The expression of the pain of the mother who holds the helpless mangled body of her son in her hands… A work that dialogues closely with both bodies.
I repeat, in the end these are just my very personal opinions. The exhibition is definitely worth visiting. It is really worth it.
Also, if you are in Turin and you don’t have the time to visit the Royal Museums, take at least a stroll around the Piazzetta Reale and maybe let me know what you think!
In Between, Fabio Viale ai Musei Reali
Trained at the University of Turin, where she obtained her three-year degree in Cultural Heritage Sciences and her master's degree in History of Archaeological and Historical-Artistic Heritage, she specialized at the University of Milan, graduating in Archaeological Heritage. Freelancer, she deals with computer archeology and virtual heritage, museum displays, 2D graphics and multimedia products applied to cultural heritage. Collaborates with various public and private bodies in the field of projects related to the research, enhancement, communication and promotion of cultural heritage. She deals with the creation of cultural itineraries relating to the entire Italian Peninsula and the development of content (creation of texts and photographic production) for paper and virtual publications. Her study interests include the development of new techniques and means of communication for the enhancement of cultural heritage and the evolution of the symbolism of power between the Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.
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