London, April 22: German artist Gregor Schneider plans to exhibit a dying person as the focus of an upcoming show.

The artist, whose previous works have included a disturbing recreation of family life in two identical houses in the East End of London and a 20-year project to transform his parents’ former house, said his aim was “to show the beauty of death”.

Schneider claims to have found a doctor in Dusseldorf who will help him find a volunteer willing to die in public in the name of art.

“Unfortunately today, death and the road to death are about suffering. Coming to terms with death as I plan it can take away the pain of dying for us,” the artist told the online edition of Die Welt.

In 2000, Schneider himself feigned death as part of a show in Haus Esters Museum in Krefeld. He was awarded the Golden Lion for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale the following year for Dead House, a reconstruction of his parents’ home. He is currently showing an installation in Paris consisting of a series of rooms of decreasing size. Visitors make their way through the installation alone, and are filmed as they do so.

A 17th-century Dutch painting whose Jewish owner was killed during World War II is to be auctioned this week after Poland helped broker an agreement between his descendants and the owner.