When you hear that someone is into latex, certain X-rated images come to mind. Mexican sculptor and performance artist César Martínez is seriously into latex. His black latex sculptures, currently on display at Hunt Kastner Artworks, appeal to people of all ages, however. Passersby — especially children — stop and look with curiosity through the gallery windows, some laughing and others puzzled by the inflating and deflating figures.

Martínez (born in 1962 in Mexico City) uses nude human models from which he casts lifesize figural sculptures or other works that intermingle various body parts. Made of thick, dull black latex (except for one aquamarine female figure), the sculptures periodically fill up with air from blow-dryers that are connected via long black tubes that seem like umbilical cords. They slowly inflate, then rapidly deflate.

"Air is so important that it is considered the matter that sustains life," writes Martínez in the catalog for this traveling exhibit. "It is also the breath that reduces or expands us. Nitrogen and oxygen: life's equation. This is where my interest in inflatable sculptures, soft sculptures, blown sculptures, comes from."

He also points out that, since humans today seem to have so little concern with maintaining the proper quality of air necessary to sustain life, we are unconsciously asphyxiating ourselves. Our environment has become an unhealthily clogged bronchial tube.

Inside the gallery, two female figures sit facing each other, one black and one aquamarine, taking turns rising in form. Behind them on the wall are a man and a woman, alternately standing or hanging in a droop. There is a man with his mouth wide open crouched in a nearby corner, another woman crouched in a window front, and a male figure curiously balanced atop a wooden ladder — when he is full of air he looks like a stiff high-diver.

There is also a newborn infant on a pedestal, and, on two other pedestals near the windows, there are male busts that rise to kiss each other. Elsewhere the figures are all in utter isolation, even when they are in close proximity to each other.

While the figures rise and fall in solitude, this is not a quiet show by any means. There is the constant buzz of blow-dryers and the strong stench of rubber, giving the exhibit an overall industrial ambience and a nervous edge.

In a separate section of the gallery, there are photographs taken by Martínez on the streets of Spain and Italy. The most interesting of these are chance juxtapositions, such as the body of a woman in a bikini on a billboard looming over a crowd of jaded shoppers who don't notice her at all. By including these images with the inflatable sculptures, the artist seems to be making the point that we fail to notice much of our environment, even when it is in our face or hanging right over our heads.

With no intention of discouraging visitors, the view from outside the gallery is probably better than the one inside. Through the long windows facing Kamenická street, a viewer can more easily see the animated figures in their collective action, nicely framed by the white-walled interior and the light-gray facade of the gallery.