Portuguese artist Didier Faustino has created a mask that clamps over the faces of a kissing couple.

Called Doppelgänger, the 3D-printed mask holds the wearers' heads apart at a fixed angle while hole at the centre allow their mouths to meet.

The piece is on show at the Lafayette Maison in Paris.

Photos are courtesy of Didier Faustino and Galerie Michel Rein.

The information that follows is from Didier Faustino:

Doppelgänger

As part of the "Conversations" circuit at Designer's Days, Didier Faustino is installing "Interzone" in the windows of Lafayette Maison with Doppelgänger, a piece produced for the occasion.

A white mask separates into two. Its conjoined parts fuse together recreating a sort of prosthesis for a mirror kiss.

The double entry mask pivots the heads of those who put it on, defining the minimum limits, an immaterial border becoming real.

Doppelgänger seems to prevent contact and yet it reveals a link, the meeting of the mouths which slot into one another through a perfectly traced, proportioned orifice.

Like a hygienist mask maintained in equilibrium, Doppelgänger appears to be like a prosthesis which controls the kiss.

Doppelgänger forces the tête-à-tête to feel the other, to let them slip into their inner world, with the risk of meeting their alter ego and losing themselves within it.

Didier Faustino benefited from the support of Sculpteo.com, a platform entirely online which allows extremely refined objects to be produced from 3D digital files.

An installation in the windows of Lafayette Maison from 16th to 20th June 2011.
35 bd Haussmann
75009 Paris