Invisible Man

by on November 15, 2009 at 7:40 am in The Arts | Permalink

Chinese artist Liu Bolin does not use photoshop, just paint. It helps to know that the government shut down his art studio in 2005.  More here

Bolin1

Riz Din November 15, 2009 at 9:38 am

Quite fantastic. This reminds me of the 3-D pavement graffiti, only this time the artist is the subject.

Slocum November 15, 2009 at 2:35 pm

Those pictures are amazing!

Yes, but only because they were done with paint rather than Photoshop. Which is pretty odd when you think about it–the value of the art, then, is not the images that result (the end product that we actually see), but in the back-story, in that they were produced using a difficult, painstaking (but wholly unnecessary) process.

mk November 15, 2009 at 3:19 pm

It’s a signal of purity of intention. It makes for very effective protest, much like a hunger strike.

anon November 15, 2009 at 3:45 pm

Paint to Photoshop is as Art to Hackery

Chris November 15, 2009 at 11:29 pm

@Slocum, @gary

He paints his body. Then he poses for photographs. That is what makes it so cool. You could be walking by and he would look almost invisible. It’s something you couldn’t recreate with Photoshop. So, it’s the end product we value here, not the medium of creation. We’re just viewing it in a form that could easily be counterfeited.

Zamfir November 16, 2009 at 3:57 am

He paints his body. Then he poses for photographs. [...] We’re just viewing it in a form that could easily be counterfeited.

That’s a nice trick, but it still only works on camera. The part of the uniform he painted on himself for example only works from this exact angle.

But what’s the problem that the production method counts? We could easily manipulate images to make the 100m sprint seem faster on screen, or to have your favourite team win every game. Or film mars landings in a studio.

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