Ultimate life: Casting from death

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Plaster can directly capture life and is equally capable of documenting the end of life, that brief moment when life transforms into death. No artifact approaches this as closely as the death mask. From its physical contact with the face of a person who was alive only an instant ago, the death mask distills an allegedly authentic cast that confronts death with "ultimate life", something utterly beyond its reach. In addition to a selection of master or gelatin models of death masks from the Gipsformerei, two original death masks from the Nationalgalerie, realized as busts, and exhibition copies of the famous plaster casts of the dead from Pompeii are presented here.