Fabio Viale, “Thank you and Goodbye,” detail, white marble, 2012, and “Infinite,” white marble, 2011 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Sperone Westwater
257 Bowery
Tuesday – Saturday through February 23, free
212-999-7337
www.speronewestwater.com
stargate slideshow
A child prodigy, Italian sculptor Fabio Viale has been working in marble since he was sixteen years old. Now thirty-seven, the Cuneo-born Viale is having his first solo show in New York, “Stargate,” a diverse collection of marble works on two floors of Sperone Westwater that are all about juxtaposition and recontextualization, combining the modern world with the art historical. Upon entering the vestibule, visitors are greeted by “Souvenir Gioconda,” a marble casting of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa that appears to be made out of Styrofoam and looking like pieces have been picked off of it. The sculpture is part of Viale’s Souvenir series, which references people’s desire to own great works of art, either in replica, like a souvenir from a gift shop, or by actually taking part of the original, a practice that has become widespread in Italy, with the nose being a particularly favorite target. The gallery’s main space on the first floor contains three statues that form a kind of Pop art trio: “Ahgalla III” is a life-size canoe that Viale has actually taken out on the water; “Stargate” is made up of stacked fruit crates that form a larger crate standing on its side, almost as if a doorway into the commercial world; and “Linea schiacciata” is a twenty-foot-long I-beam that calls into question the very structure of objects. In the back room, bathed in a religious glow, is “Souvenir (Pietá) III,” a gorgeous sculpture of Jesus removed from the arms of his mother, based on Michelangelo’s iconic “Pietá,” instead now spread across a black platform, to be experienced in a completely different way. “I never look back to the past. If you want to run fast, you must never turn around,” the Torino-based Viale tells interviewer Alessandra Galasso in the exhibition catalog. “My main aim is to go beyond tradition. As they are, my sculptures can be interpreted as being academic or nostalgic because they are made of marble, and it is therefore fundamental that I avoid any nostalgic references to the past. For example, when I look at the ‘Pietá,’ I am interested in understanding how Michelangelo managed to achieve certain effects using marble — rather than what this work represents in art history — in order to represent the same semantic values.”
Fabio Viale, “Souvenir (Pietá) III,” white marble, 2006 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The works upstairs continue Viale’s goal of transcending tradition. “Infinite” is a pair of impossibly interlocked white marble Michelin tires cast in great detail. “Anchor” is a fifty-five-inch anchor screw turned into a totem pole. And “Thank you and Goodbye” — made using a computer-controlled robot, while all the other sculptures were made by Viale’s own extremely talented hands — consists of two giant paper bags, one with a pair of eyeholes, the other with a circle for a mouth, on situated on either side of “Infinite,” taking an everyday mundane object and transforming it into something that recalls KKK hoods as well as Klan-like figures found in the work of Philip Guston. A paper bag is also something people use to carry items in, perhaps referencing bags from gift shops where one can buy iconic souvenirs of the Mona Lisa, the “Pietá,” and other classic works of art and take them home, but alas, there are no such objects for sale at Sperone Westwater. “Stargate” is on view through February 23, joined by “A Picture Gallery in the Italian Tradition of the Quadreria (1750 – 1850),” which includes paintings and drawings from the Italian figurative tradition, providing an interesting complement to Viale’s thrilling show.