The skull is the first and strongest archetype of humanity. One of the clearest symbols, capable of representing fear, death, but also pure hedonism, celebration and attachment to life. It’s a form that binds all of us and that has inspired every cultural and religious field in art, fashion, design, graphics, music and illustration. From Damien Hirst to Andy Warhol and Takashi Murakami, from punk to gothic and kitsch.

A densely symbolic image, to the zero point of its meaning.

So when Australian hyper-realistic sculptor Ron Mueck created Mass, his new installation at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, filling an entire room with 100 huge skulls, it was as if he wanted to represent all of us and talk to everyone.

But Mass is also a gloomy study on mortality, a work that calls to mind iconic images of the remains amassed in Paris catacombs, and a denunciation/documentation of “contemporary human atrocities in Cambodia, Rwanda, Srebrenica and Iraq,” says the National Gallery of Victoria.

Mueck has thus created his greatest work to date. The individual skulls are made of fiberglass and resin, each about one and a half meter tall, while the entire installation weighs about 5 tons. Each skull hand-finished by the artist.

Looking at it, it’s impossible to avoid the contradiction between the beauty of forms and the intensity of their meaning.

Mass is one of the works that inaugurated on December 15 the National Gallery of Victoria Triennial, an ambitious exhibition that will last until April 18, 2018.