This week, the Clayton Brothers, Rob and Christian, are off to China to debut a new body of work. "Patient," which consists of 15 large-scale paintings and 7 works on paper, explores an interior world in which an assortment of medically besieged characters experience the fragility of life.

Gone is the wacky fun world of the neighborhood Laundromat, the subject of the brother's show last year at Bellwether Gallery in New York, which celebrated everyday life in all its gritty, grimy and somewhat mad glory. This year, the viewer is confronted with appendages, organs, symptoms and illnesses. Here, the idea of a body's ability to heal itself is subsumed into a medical-industrial world of mechanized diagnostics and surgical interventions that offer the only viable cure for what plagues you - except for a bit of relief that comes from an apple a day or a spoonful of Pepto-Bismol.

Left to right, above: Patient N; Patient E; Working in Harmony. Courtesy of the artists.

While Patient T seems to suffer from a simple cold, Patient I is besieged by damaged body parts and what appear to be out-of-control cell clusters; hovering in the background is the ghostly figure of a medic. In a portrait of Patient E, thoughts about what could be wrong seems to have taken over the life of this poor suffering thing.

Sometimes the subject is genuinely grisly. In Regeneration, a female patient with a gangrenously green arm contemplates a severed finger and a potted plant. In The Human Body, a nurse armed with a syringe the size of a rocket launcher lunges toward a patient that is part human and part unknown parts. Among the grotesques that seek help in this hallucinogenic hospital of last resort is a human figure with a bird head. Standing in a pile of guts, in a setting that suggests a human body-parts shop, he reaches toward what has to be a total respiratory system replacement. But a ray of hope shines through in a painting called Working in Harmony. Here, the figure's brain is filled with beautifully colored designs and light beams, suggesting that healthy living and good food are what it takes to avoid being a patient.

"Patient" runs at F2 Gallery, in Beijing, from November 17, 2007 to January 14, 2008. The opening reception for the Clayton Brothers is November 17 from 3:00 to 5:00 pm. For more information, please visit the F2 Gallery website.