Performance Artist Skip Arnold

Bad boy performance artist Skip Arnold shines from the flock, exuding a definite air of legitimacy from the dingy walls of his 7th street studio.

And while he may appear to be just another warehouse dwelling artist scrimping for rent and gin money, Arnold is far closer to the real deal than most, lecturing at Art Center, Pasadena and consistently skipping around the globe as a performance artist in residence.

As a performance artist, Arnold underscores sensationalism and the power to shock. His body as art, he brandishes a metaphorical scattergun approach, rhetorically questioning gender politics, masochism and exhibitionism.

Skip Arnold is more consumed by everyday life struggle than recounting former glories. Asked about his influences, he recalls his stock car driving father, who he regards as one of the earliest conceptualists to influence his work, to his awkward adolescence in upstate New York, to a career as a male prostitute and dalliances with heroin.

Arnold’s touching confessional is the very antithesis of his public image as a performance art bad boy, and its no wonder he resents it. With a focus on himself (or his body) as central to his work, Arnold’s performance art antics are stuff of legend, placing him in the same league as the likes of Chris Burden, and Fluxus.

“I’m not a suitcase performance artist. I always want to do something that is fresh to the place, I do something once and that’s it. It can be very self indulgent, though its not about making something. Arnold confides his manifesto, “the emphasis is on space and how/what my body does or can do. The work ranges from being extremely physical to extremely passive”.

Arnold says he also aims to explore the relationships between the self, place, and particular time. “To explore fundamental gestures and concepts, my interest is the image and nothing else. I work in media that are evanescent, transient, consumed in passing, not collected. What is common to all my work is “Skip”. Skip is the artwork, the act of doing, my actions, my choices.”

“When I first became involved in making art I wanted to be a painter. Five years of school in a few different programs, and after that I rapidly became involved in film and then video made me open my eyes wide which saw me graduate from painting to collage film and video then onto performance.”

Testing boundaries and pushing buttons is central to Arnold’s work, as is testing endurance and rejoicing in the absurd. In one video taped performance, he perched like a gargoyle on a building edge, parodying architectural sculpture. Another, titled “hood Ornament” saw him tied naked to the hood of a semi trailer which motored through the streets of Sun Valley in California.

Shirtless and irreverent, with shaven head and punk rock sneer, another video based piece saw repeated screamed narrative, “Girls In Bikinis G\et Fucked All Day.” Another, titled “I Want A Girlfriend,” involved a coast to coast road trip on a quest to meet assorted women who responded to magazine and billboard advertisements for a new partner. After phoning a hotline, the stipulation for meeting involved interested parties paying for dinner.

In 1996 Arnold circumnavigated the Bermuda Triangle waiting to penetrate another dimension in a speed boat. More recent performances have seen him displayed naked in glass cases, and plastic wrap inside and outside various international galleries, shower naked for four days at the Grammercy Artfare and pose as a human welcome mat at the’ ArtBasel fair in Switzerland.

April 2002, the Full Nelson Palace Theater show in Los Angeles saw the performance of a piece called Part Of The Cast. The exercise involved the application of makeup in a ritual mimicking the act of applying makeup before going on stage. Seen through the view of a bulb lit dressing room mirror, Arnold removes his shirt, shaves, and applies makeup, with his actions then broadcast to the lobby of the venue via a closed circuit security monitor.

“I liked the anticipation of the piece. It said a lot about masochism and performance and was based on the premise of a suitcase and going from show to show presenting it. I was not seen by anyone in person until the end of the show. It was a quintessential statement about the notion that without the makeup you are nothing, no one knows who you are. His work has since graced a number of international galleries and shows.