Justin Urbach, FreezeFrame I, 2024

2024

Medium

Oxide crude steel frame, Hahnemühle Watercolor Paper and laser engravings

Dimensions

74 × 48 cm

Status

In Gallery Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-155949

The wall pieces "FreezeFrame I" (2024) and "FreezeFrame II" (2024), made of laser-engraved paper, are framed with raw steel and feature images of MRI scans and graphics derived from medical data obtained during the examination of human brains. These works are part of the artistic complex "Fractal Breeze", at the center of which stands a video installation: a metafictional representation depicting a technological future where two characters navigate the boundaries of virtuality and reality. In "Fractal Breeze", silicon, the raw material used in microchip production, enables the transition into a hybrid world where virtual spheres increasingly materialize, and the characters experience a new corporeality. Through the symbiotic connection of body and technology, a transhuman cycle emerges, pointing to societal developments and the multidimensional processes of resource extraction and energy storage. Body-related data of the performers, collected through MRI scans, 3D scans, and motion capture, integrated into the video, are transferred by Urbach into other works across various media. In "FreezeFrame I" and "FreezeFrame II", paper becomes the storage medium, laser-burning cross-sections, data, and patterns to depict the synergy between the body and technologized processes. The cinematic narration, factually tied to the real world through medical data, is in turn translated into the analog in "FreezeFrame I" and "FreezeFrame II", thus becoming their material artifact.