What is interiority? That magical, intimate and inscrutable world that belongs to everyone and is the seat of our emotions. Emotionality that emerges and becomes present only if we are available and open to dialogue, discussion and sharing. Emotionality that becomes stronger, more dominant and unstoppable if we create a close relationship of empathy with those and what surrounds us that generates what in psychoanalysis is defined as emotional resonance. As the psychiatrist Umberto Galimberti claims, "Emotional resonance means feeling before putting reason into motion, feeling what is good and what is bad, what is serious and what is not serious." In other words we can define emotional resonance as that mix of feeling, emotion and dream that is inherent to the human soul. Something tremendously strong, indispensable and indispensable, which flows like a river within each of us and which takes on our appearance, merges with what belongs to us and which gives us shape.
It is on this climate of declared or latent emotionality that the work of Massimo Di Mauro and EvaKillerDog is based. The approach is different, the style too, but the common denominator that binds them and that amalgamates their artistic practice is to communicate and give shape to something that in reality does not have a full and autonomous form.
A term appears in the title of the exhibition: the black knight. What is the Black Knight? Who is the man portrayed from behind by EvaKillerDog? We could give it a very specific identity but it seems more suitable here not to identify it with a particular person but rather to bring it back to that magical world of emotions that we mentioned earlier. The black knight represents our hidden part, dark because indecipherable, he does not have a well-defined face, he can be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It is part of us and allows us to bring out our best part, to discern between right and wrong, between moral and immoral, between sadness and joy. It is an excellent term of comparison to highlight beauty, hope and life. It is no coincidence, in fact, that EvaKillerDog represented its rider surrounded by a riot of colors and shapes.
How do Massimo Di Mauro's works dialogue and coexist with those of EvaKillerDog? What is the binder? What unites them? When it comes to emotions and moods, it is difficult and complex to give an objective answer, valid for everyone and immovable. The response comes to us clear and strong if we look at his self-portrait sculpture: half of the head is dark, half gives vent to color and here we return to that dichotomy that lives within us. Our dark side does not represent our essence in its entirety. We are not just black, we are also and above all colour, hope, good. Black and green touch each other, communicate with each other and generate harmony and balance. We feel the same perception in the triptych: a natural landscape, colorful trees, a lush countryside but, in the centre, two black lines that act as a background.
They don't even represent a quarter of the entire work but they are there, allowing themselves to be observed and admired. They do not claim to absorb all our attention, they cannot have it: the colours, the transparency of intent, the variety of shapes (and therefore of moods) take over and win over the darkness. Darkness that returns and manifests itself around what was a sacred animal for the ancient Egyptians because it was able to connect and dialogue with the world of the deceased: the cat. Massimo Di Mauro's cat intimidates and plays down at the same time. He transports us with irony and irreverence into his psyche and his way of being and convinces us more and more of how multifaceted and rich human nature is, in that precarious balance of feelings and emotions which, like it or not, get the better of that rationality pure, precise, rigid and an end in itself which does nothing but create barriers and misunderstandings and generate loneliness and superficiality.
