Pins and Needles

The Belgian butcher blending pop art with body art

When Jef Palumbo moved to Brussels to set up a tattoo parlour with his friend Kostek, the Marolles was an obvious choice.  “Place Jeu de Balle is very working class and we liked that because tattooing was traditionally a working class thing,” he says.  Yet Palumbo is far from a traditionalist.  Take, for example, the parlour’s eye-wateringly candid name, La Boucherie Moderne, or The Modern Butcher.  Or take a look at the tattoos that he creates, which, with Technicolor hues, arcade game graphics or 3D effects, are a far cry from your traditional skull’n’bones.

“We thought: if we can do it on paper, why not on skin?” remembers Palumbo, who we caught at work between tattooing trips to Greece and Norway. He recognises that “the style is influenced by pop art” and cites artists such as Lichtenstein and Ben Frost as favourites.  His work recalls the serigraphy techniques used by pop artists (think Warhol’s Monroe) as well as forms of street art.  “Maybe that’s why a lot of people like it, as it has a modern look.”

La Boucherie Moderne is no place to go if you want to be inked up with a  run-of-the-mill dragon or Celtic cross.  “If people want that stuff, we send them to people who do it better.”  Each tattoo is individually designed after a consultation with the client. “I give people a lot of attention because I want them to be happy.”  But he also exercises discretion; he won’t “tattoo people that are too young, especially in visible places,” so there will be no repeat of the infamous case of 18-year-old Kimberley Vlaminck who had 56 black stars tattooed on her face in Kortrijk tattoo parlour.

Palumbo’s purist approach and avant-garde style has earned him an international following, showing that not everything on Place Jeu de Balle is second-hand.

La Boucherie Moderne, 26 Place du Jeu de Balle, www.boucheriemoderne.be