Naked Pieces of You Clinic
ABOUT
Naked Pieces of You Clinic (NPYC) is an ongoing live art project in which the artist paints or draws figurative and abstract body portraits of both women and men. It is modelled on the idea of a clinic, replacing the role of doctor and patient with that of artist and muse.
NPYC, an experimental artwork in and of itself, offers a space for the body to become a subject and a part or chapter in NYPC's ongoing narrative. Both sitter and artist can perceive the body with only their eyes, its form recorded in paint and/or oil pastel.
CONCEPT
Ruth Fox perceives that we rely heavily, if not wholly, on mirrors and photographs to see and make sense of our physical identity. Both the mirror and the reflective image are intangible replications or simulations of our actual physical bodies and selves - “second-hand experiences of the body”. In much of Western culture, both mirror and reflected image often result in cradling or hurting the ego.
Instead, she adopts the view that there is a more accurate way to see the body, which is to look at its physicality right in front of our eyes, a first-hand "primal view" of the body and a way of seeing the body which we rarely engage with. This very primal manner of looking at and experiencing the body, arms, legs, hands and toes in this often foreshortened way reveals our physical selves like a landscape, and as fragments of a whole, made up of lines, shapes, planes and contours.
COMMISSIONS
Please email the studio for appointments and prices.
BACKGROUND
NYPC started as a live art project in April, 2019 in Mayfair, London, with men and women drawn and painted semi-naked by Ruth Fox in the window of 4 Mason's Yard behind White Cube during her solo show 'How You See Me, How You Don't.' The core aim of the project is to shed as much as possible the predominantly Western cultural beliefs and idealisms we hold about body image, race, age and other intersectional factors, which we understand as truths. These are found in magazines and in advertising (both online and in our public spaces) alongside the cultural and social constructs we've grown up with.
The realisation of this project followed Ruth's TEDx talk, ‘How to Rebel Against Body Image Idealism’ at Royal Holloway University in 2018. The talk features a line on the artist's face (which is getting more and more defined) projected on to a screen at 12 feet high.
For more information about Ruth Fox, please visit ABOUT