There he stands in the middle of a Mayfair gallery, $90,000-worth of fine, milky marble chiselled into the shape of a male torso: headless, fig-leaved and gloriously visible. His name is Kouros, but he could be a waiter in a West End café or a gym-obsessed banker over in the City of London, because large parts of his shoulders and back are obscured by an enormous, psychedelic tattoo.
“Kouros” is the work of Fabio Viale, an Italian sculptor who takes fine stone, chisels it into replicas of classical statues, then inks tattoos on their marble flesh. He has adorned the neck of Michelangelo’s “David” with wings, and the shoulders of the “Venus de Milo” with flowers. Viale’s work may not be to older collectors’ taste, but it has been exhibited at galleries and art fairs all over the world.
“Viale really resonates with the millennial generation,” says Elio D’Anna, co-founder of Artcels, the online art investment platform behind the exhibition at Hofa Gallery. (After exhibiting in London in the spring “Kouros” travelled to the Greek island of Mykonos for another show.)