Photographer Magazine (2001)
Most people have two ways of communicating with the world. The first, the more internal, attempts genuine communication with the world and their fellow human beings, while the second, the more external, uses a mask to 'secure' a degree of communication with the outside world and their peers. It's the analogy between the naked and the clothed body. This dualism does not constitute hypocrisy but is part of the right of defense that every person wants to exercise to protect the hermetic space of their personality. The security of clothing shields the naked body from intrusive gazes. But clothes are also a part of their true, always personal, personality. Our showcase is also our own creation.
The mask is not built like a wall excluding others and the outside world, but like a mesh consisting of samples of commonly accepted behavior, conventions, and rules that integrate the individual into society. This mask does not reveal a fake self but allows the more conventional and socially accepted part of our (always true) self to emerge. Over time, it happens that a person uses their mask so effectively and becomes so comfortable behind it that they forget there is a more private part, thus adopting the showcase as content.
However, in all the essential and deeply personal acts and relationships of our life, in areas such as love, friendship, family, ideological affiliation, and of course, artistic creation, the mask initially ensures an always acceptable result, but ultimately acts as a barrier and does not allow us to utilize the full range and especially the uniqueness of our personality. After all, this uniqueness is what is sought in all cases where we operate as non-interchangeable individuals.
The effort of the artist-creator is to maintain the hope of communication with the outside world and other people by increasingly using their personal world without the protective mask. The path is difficult and double-directed. That is, there is a parallel search on one hand for our unmasked self, which is neither easy nor obvious given that our mask is also ourselves, and on the other hand for the method through which this real image of ourselves will use elements of the mask and the outside world to take a readable form that can communicate with the world and third parties.
These processes seem to have a psychoanalytic echo, although their relationship with psychoanalysis can only be indirect and coincidental. This is because psychoanalysis places the individual itself at the central point (from which everything starts and at which everything ends). In contrast, in Art, the particular interest is that the focus is a square whose four sides symbolize the artist, art, life, and third parties. Each has its own significance and value, while simultaneously influencing the others.
One of the problems hidden in such a process of search is the fact that each person's mask-free personality consists of a multi-faceted and complex aggregation of individual elements. Thus, the attempt to render this complex interiority would end in confusion, making any potential expression and communication arbitrary. However, we find that all great creators, and with this adjective, we ultimately describe those who managed to liberate their uniqueness, limit their proposition to a few elements that thus become symbols of their work. We can then talk about the artist's obsessions and the central idea of a work. This umbrella, this cover of the overall work, is not ultimately a restriction but a necessary abstraction to find the channel that will host the complex versions of artistic uniqueness.
The religious origin of Art adds to the above square the gaze of God, in front of which there was no place for our individual mask, while the artistic process had something of the sincerity and stripping of confession. Today the artist has no other gaze to fear than his own, while he confesses only to himself. All other factors of art (professors and degrees, journalists, art critics, and awards) increasingly encourage him to use his mask and less and less allow him to strip. The only possible way out of this vicious cycle is the recognition and acceptance by the artist of a personal audience in front of which he is forced (and wants) to feel fully stripped. And the only likely method is the continuous artistic work and search. Almost as an end in itself.
Plato Rivellis