The sex of angels is undoubtedly female, at least in the human form that the celestial creatures represented in vegan skin by Fabio Viola Vega, a pop artist with deep conceptual roots, take shape.
In the heart of Milan’s urban Isola pulsates, in this solo exhibition, the beating of folded wings before the mystical flight of angelic human figures – anthropoectoplasmic mutant hybrids – composed in assembled shreds of industrial leather fragments otherwise destined as raw material for furniture or furnishings. Viola Vega has been working with refined specialization on this technique for years. The expressive result is reminiscent of the pop iconographies of 1970s posters, those with psychedelic chromatic effect of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin for instance, but the latest works, hung these days on the walls of the Notting Hill in Milan, mark a greater evolution in the naturalness of the compositions, in the color combinations and even in the rendering of shadows, as well as for the unprecedented use of other decorative materials in addition to her now well-known skins.
“My angels express a dual interpretation,” the artist explains, ”: certainly, they lead back to spirituality, but more than the religious phenomenon, they are bearers of a reflection on the dual nature of the human soul. And witnesses of that valence are the female creatures embodied in the intermediation between human and divine, with a declared origin in original sin, so to say, “the angels continues Viola Vega – are a derivation of my previous, very earthly works: sensual women, embraces, kisses, amplexes of physical pleasure. Now they have taken wings, elevated themselves to a higher thought while remaining human beings-the human angels are us. This I like to think.”
Paolo Sciortino