all images courtesy the artist | click to enlarge
Pinpin Co, a Chinese artist raised in Japan, creates intricately detailed and somewhat disturbing skin drawings. Using just a 0.38mm gel ink pen, Pinpin spends about 5 hours on each subject, understanding them as human beings and creating an ephemeral artwork that often captures physical or mental scars that the subject possesses. “It often becomes a therapeutic process,” she says in an interview, describing how the relationship between her subjects can take on that of doctor and patient. It’s now wonder that her drawings often take on a grotesqueness that resembles blood veins.
Pinpin also divulges into how her art can be a healing process for herself too. She recently decided to draw on her father, who she had lived apart from her whole life. “Coming in contact with a stranger’s skin and a family member’s skin are two completely different experiences,” she says. During the span of 1 month, Pinpin commuted to Aomori to visit her father, slowly re-establishing a relationship, which resulted in what is perhaps one of her most compelling images.
Pinpin’s father
Pinpin’s Ink on Skin series will be on display at BankART Studio NYK in Yokohama from July 6 – July 16, 2012.
