Isn’t it enough to be a multi-million pound actor with James Dean looks? Apparently not, not for James Franco, the chiselled star of the Spider-Man franchise and 127 Hours who is stretching his creative talent into multimedia installations under the supervision of Scottish artist Douglas Gordon for their Psycho Nacirema collaboration.
The movie industry does play a part, chiefly in the use of the recreated Hitchcock flick’s blood-spattered backdrop of Psycho, and the case of Fatty Arbuckle, the silent film star whose career took a nosedive after several trials for sexual crimes against women. As you can guess from the subject matter, Psycho Nacirema is a dark and bloody experience, with Franco lending a typically dramatic quality to the pairing which first worked together at the Venice film festival with Rebel Constellation in 2011. Both the artists and viewer are invited to get into character in this unsettling homage to Hitch at PACE London until 27th July.
