Untitled, 2002, video installation, edition of 3 sets of 2 Betacam SP Master copies & 1 courtesy the artist,

(With assistance from the National Library of Medicine)

PATRICK MARTINEZ

Advanced medical imaging technologies came into clinical use in successive decades: CAT in the 70s, MRI in the 80s, and PET in the 90s. Unlike CAT scans that rely on the summation of x-ray images and PET scans that rely on the decay of an injected radioactive pharmaceutical, MRI does not involve radiation. Instead it uses a powerful magnet and the spin of hydrogen atoms in the body’s water to generate images. It is astonishing to think of MRI and PET scans as the body’s way of illuminating itself from within through subatomic particles. The online Visible Human Project, sponsored by the National Library of Medicine, imaged an executed murderer’s body and a female body using the full array of medical imaging technologies including transverse CT, MR, and cryosection images. The male was sectioned at one-millimeter intervals, the female at one third of a millimeter interval. The long-term goal of the project is to produce a knowledge structure that will transparently link visual knowledge forms to symbolic knowledge formats such as the names of body parts. In his untitled 2002 piece, Patrick Martinez has taken the successive slices from the project and placed them in rapid sequence to create images of expanding and contracting abstractions, giving one the mesmerizing sensation of traveling through the body at great speed.

- Kóan-Jeff Baysa

Patrick Martinez was born in France and currently lives and works in NYC. He studied at the Institute of High Studies in Visual Arts in Paris , France , and at the Fine Arts School of Grenoble. He has exhibited his work in solo shows at the Metronom Gallery in Barcelona, Spain; Vallois Gallery in Paris France; Casa Gallery in Tokyo, Japan; and in group shows at Exit Art in NYC, Art in General in NYC, Contemporary Creation Center in Paris, and Arcos da Lapa in Rio de Janeiro. Additionally Martinez has been an artist in residence in France , Japan , and the US .