Paint Skin is an artwork by Jonathan Armour, a part of the Skinterface collection. Paint Skin utilizes 21st-century technology to enhance the ancient practice of body painting, creating a visio-haptic experience. This artwork captures the immediate and intuitive response of the artist to the male model in paint, which is typically ephemeral and washed away. It allows viewers to intimately connect with the art, feeling as though they are getting under the skin of the painting. Inspired by films like Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book and Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In, this work transforms the body into a canvas where paint and skin meld into a single membrane. Viewers can experience this body as a three-dimensional object in high-definition film, offering a closeness previously captured in Yoko Ono’s experimental film Fly.
Technical production: Leo Crane.
Model: Roy Joseph Butler.