Arnold Mario Dall'O, Kinki Texas 

The works by Giulia Maiorano, Eleonora Molignani, Kinki Texas, and Arnold Mario Dall’O evoke worlds in which the animal figure, iconographic memory, and the creative gesture become instruments of knowledge—or of disorientation—through which to question who we are, what we see, and what looks back at us. The title alludes to the mirror’s dual nature: a site of reflection and of consideration, a surface that refers back yet also distorts, that reveals while at the same time conceals. The animal thus becomes a metaphor for a primordial self, for a collective unconscious, or for a form of knowledge that precedes language. The exhibition unfolds as a dialogue between languages distant in era, tone, and sensibility, constructing a constellation of references among creative gesture, iconography, and metamorphosis.
Giulia Maiorano (Milan, 1991), with E tu chi sei? (2025), presents a bronze sculpture in which a squirrel encounters its own reflected image for the first time. The irony of the scene—the surprise, the attempt to touch what cannot be touched—becomes an allegory of the origin of consciousness: a moment of disorientation in which self and other coincide, only to separate. It is the dawn of a recognition that does not yet have a name.
In a different yet complementary register, Eleonora Molignani (Milan, 1995) develops her research on the boundary between art history, symbol, and desire. In the series Talpidi celesti (2025), the snout of the star-nosed mole—a creature that does not “see” but perceives the world through an extremely refined system of touch—is transfigured into a small tactile constellation. The sculptures compose a fragment of a celestial vault made not of light but of touch: a constellation of star-shaped noses capable of orienting underground, a way of knowing through contact, intuition, and proximity. Her works evoke subterranean knowledge, a cosmogram born from darkness rather than from light.
The works on paper by Kinki Texas (Bremen, 1969) introduce an untamed narrative tension into the exhibition. Mythical, grotesque, and theatrical figures inhabit a universe in which the sacred and current events, memory and fiction intertwine seamlessly. The animals that traverse this imaginary are not reassuring presences: they become uneasy totems, distorting mirrors that return an image of a vulnerable, wounded, at times ferocious humanity. Here the reflection does not clarify but rekindles doubt; it does not pacify, but questions.
Finally, the paintings on brass plates by Arnold Mario Dall’O (Bolzano, 1960) function as artifacts from an imaginary archaeology. His metal surfaces, dense with symbols, seem to guard a remote memory, a reservoir of images oscillating between nature and artifice, spirituality and matter. Within the context of Specchi animali, his work takes on an alchemical dimension: what we see is at once relic and premonition, body and trace, a fragment of a future or forgotten iconography. The animal, in his works, appears as a talisman that survives the ages, as a silent witness observing our passage.