黑料不打烊

The mirror has not been with us for long. It was only five or six thousand years ago that some creative and industrious soul polished up a flat piece of bronze and voil脿鈥攜ou, only golden.

So it鈥檚 interesting, that the mask has been part of the human selfscape for at least 40,000 years鈥攁nd, given that most would have been made out of degradable materials like leather, twine and feathers, probably 40,000 years longer.

Perhaps they knew what we do not鈥攜our face is a prison, a mask is a key. This basic truth lies at the rock bottom of Ugo Rondinone鈥檚 new show of eight stone masks, weighing in between three and 14 kilograms. Elemental and prehistoric in design, they are all different, spaped vaguely like hexagons, ovals, hearts, shields or just a good old-fashioned rocky blob, but they are all visual cousins to the legendary chipped-stone hand axe, the first known human tool. Though mostly the size of a human face, Rondinone鈥檚 masks are stonily symbolic, with naught but a pair of blank round eyeholes (albeit with teeny crow鈥檚 feet) to suggest a face, and wildly unwearable unless you are very strong and very drunk.