LONDON, ENGLAND.-Light Contemporary presents an exciting new exhibition ‘Temporary Present’ featuring the unique photography and innovative Breathing Sculptures by the artist Cesar Martinez. The Breathing Sculptures challenge the boundaries between sculpture and art they are living organisms representing the constant struggle through life. Martinez remarks: “Life is just that…a breath”. Air is the focus of the exhibition, as Martinez explains the same air that gives us life also kills us. His vision is understandable when we realize his origin is the City of Mexico – one of the most polluted cities in the world.

The exhibition which will be shown at Light Contemporary from 6th–24th September features a series of black latex figures which are moulded on real people and sculpted into life-like art installations which constantly inflate and collapse before your very eyes. Martinez’s life-like sculptural installations automatically inhale air every 30 seconds, as they inhale the black latex bodies inflate to full capacity. The figures quite literally transform from empty heaps of rubber and come alive as they grow into full-scale life figures before our very eyes. Once at full capacity they collapse, breathing out the life giving air and returning slowly to the mysterious dead heaps and the cycle renews and begins again as the cyclical rotation through life’s path.

It will also feature Martinez’s unique style of contemporary photography presenting real urban situations in a particular way to provide juxtapositions and internal ironies. His findings are true pictures with serious social messages; his sharp approach and use of distance create cleverly re-constructed concepts ‘a zoom in and zoom out approach to our daily reality’, a re-interpretation of our globalized world.

Cesar Martinez is an established artist whose work has been exhibited in and belongs to several collections in Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Austria, United States, Cuba, Colombia and Dominican Republic,. His Latin American originality and creativity can be seen in the use of a wide range of unusual materials, since the 1980’s Martinez has been expressing himself in dynamite, chocolate, jelly and rubber.

Light Contemporary is a new gallery space which features contemporary art, sculpture and new media exhibitions based at 5a Porchester Place, London, W2. It is the only gallery in the UK which promotes Latin American artists. For further details please visit www.lightcontemporary.com

Temporary Present by Cesar Martinez will run from 6th to 24th September. Private View will be opened by the Mexican Minister of Cultural Affairs Ignacio Duran and will be held on Tuesday 6th September 2005.