Darren Coffield: Psycho

“Darren Coffield’s Paradox Portraits are a superb product of art and science at its most exciting. Not only are they aesthetically pleasing and in themselves, works of art, but they excite the mind with what can be perceived, in social psychology terms as a manipulation of perception.” – Dr. Henrietta Bowden-Jones, MRCPsych, BA(Hons), DOccMed, MD(Imperial), Government Advisor and Consultant Psychiatrist.

Psycho

a) A psychotic, someone suffering from a form of psychosis

b) Alfred Hitchcock’s horror masterpiece psycho (1960) accredited with signifying the birth of the slasher movie.

c) A psychobilly, someone affiliated with psychobilly culture, fashion and music

The Residence gallery is proud to present Darren Coffield’s Psycho. These are artworks with a psychological twist, literally, as eyes are set in chins and mouths hover under the brows.

Using Alfred Hitchcock and his masterpiece as a starting point, the pictures and ceramics explore the themes of celebrity, identity, representational function and perception. These works subvert the viewer’s instinctive faculties for reading human features to create some of the most stimulating portraits of recent years. There is a paradox and psychological trigger as the viewer struggles for a brief second to interpret the information that an inverted face relays to the brain, prompting a personal reassessment of one of the most basic and instinctive human reflexes: the ability to read another human face. The portraits eschew the duality and paradox of the human condition.

These are paradox portraits…