Paint Skin uses 21st century technology to give visio-haptic enjoyment of one of the oldest forms of art practised by humankind – painting on the body. Not only does it permanently capture the intense intuitive response in paint by the male artist to the male model, all of which is normally washed away at the end of the encounter, but allows the viewer to literally get under the skin of the painting.
Paint Skin explores our sensual and intimate fascination with skin, touched upon in films such as Peter Greenaway’s “The Pillow Book”, and Pedro Almodovar’s “The Skin I Live In”.
Paint and canvas have long been metaphors for skin, but here they are fused into one paint-skin-membrane. This body becomes a shell, a container, and the viewer can “feel” it in 3 dimensions in HD film, at an intimate proximity only previously captured by the Fly in Yoko Ono’s experimental film of the same name.
The main goal is to convey a real sense of the painted body, and to reveal the nature of the exploration to the viewer.
Overall the intent is to create a visually sumptuous celebration of Roy Joseph Butler’s painted body, as encapsulated by the paint-skin-membrane. The digital becomes organic becomes fluid. The viewer can examine his skin and paint texture, the colour, the paint marks and the caverns within the body-shell. It is a sensitising journey through a strange corporeal landscape.
Paint Skin is an Armour Studio production with Brilliana, with particular thanks to Leo Crane.
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Jonathan Armour 