MASK is an artist's book by Luciano Rigolini showing an extensive sequence of the radiator grilles of American cars built between 1955 and 1962 — a time when construction technique changed greatly and allowed countless new design possibilities. The strongly sculptural front turned the cars into veritable sculptures, and it is this object-quality that fascinates Rigolini. For some years he has dispensed with photographing as such, concentrating entirely on recovering already-existing images. From an auto-parts catalogue he extracts the grilles, scans them and adds the year of production, occasionally the make or model. The clear, functional black-and-white images, printed in the middle of a white page with the rest of the car absent, produce an estrangement effect: the grille becomes an autonomous object, by turns droll, threatening, splendid or ridiculous. The successive forms evoke the golden age of the great American automobiles, conjuring a society and an era irrevocably past.