Fabio Viale's bricolas presented by Poggiali Gallery at the 2019 Venice Biennale

At the 58th Venice Biennale, Florence-based Galleria Poggiali will present a series of sculptures created by Fabio Viale (Cuneo, 1975), an internationally renowned artist who has been collaborating with Galleria Poggiali since 2015.

Fabio Viale’s works will be placed in the Venice Pavilion: twelve"bricole" (poles that sprout from the water of the lagoon to delimit spaces or to secure gondolas) that the artist will create in marble, but with a wood effect.

"The stone bricole are colossal objects, some up to almost four meters, made ex uno lapide, that is, from a single block. They rise above the water in the pavilion like gigantic figures of men tried by toil and pain. They recall the dramatic figures of a universal flood, pilgrims, migrants, desperate people fleeing the apocalypse. They are figures of exodus.
Viale claims to have recognized in them the figures of a Pieta. Like those sculpted by Michelangelo: the Rondanini Pieta and the Bandini Pieta. Or like some of the figures of the Flood in one of the scenes in the Sistine Chapel Vault. Looking at two groups of bricolas - one with two figures, two timbers clamped together by vigorous iron chains, the other with three figures, also bound together - it is possible to recognize in those forms human bodies in the same position and situation as those sculpted by Buonarroti in his two Pietà, one preserved in Milan, the other in Florence, the first in the Castello Sforzesco and the second in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Santa Maria del Fiore," wrote art critic Sergio Risaliti in the catalog that will accompany the exhibition in the Venice Pavilion.

Image: Fabio Viale, Trinity (white marble and pigments, 2019)

Fabio Viale's bricolas presented by Poggiali Gallery at the 2019 Venice Biennale

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