Mark Titchner

Art Now is a programme of exhibitions whose aim is to promote discussion and awareness of new art in Britain. For the latest in the series, Mark Titchner presents BE ANGRY BUT DON’T STOP BREATHING, an installation incorporating sculpture and text-based works which investigates seemingly conflicting systems of belief.

Titchner is fascinated with the ways in which once avant-garde philosophies have become assimilated into mainstream culture. His works refer to a variety of sources and are made in a range of media including sculpture, wall paintings, light boxes and vinyl banners.

In BE ANGRY BUT DON'T STOP BREATHING Titchner combines the ideas of a number of cult theorists whose work occupies the margins of popular thought: Wilheim Reich, psychiatrist and pioneer of Orgone energy, Arthur Janov, pioneer of Primal Therapy, Hans Jenny, natural scientist and inventor of Cymatics and Emanuel Swedenborg, eighteenth-century philosopher and theologian. At the centre of the Art Now gallery, Titchner will create the latest in an ongoing series of semi-functional works which reinterpret these now-defunct ideologies and explore notions of ritual and devotion. Visitors will be invited to scream into a hand-carved sculpture and their cries will trigger vibrations in a tray of water adjacent to the work.

A series of printed banners will accompany the work, incorporating philosophical proclamations, such as that in the exhibition title, which are suggestive of spiritual redemption. Stripped of context, these perplexing statements are set against digitally-rendered backdrops which attempt to convey a state of rapture and excess.

Mark Titchner was born in Luton in 1973 and graduated from Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design, London, in 1995. Recent exhibitions include the solo show We Were Thinking of Evolving, Vilma Gold, London (2003); Electric Earth, International Touring Exhibition organised by the British Council (2003); The Galleries Show, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2002); Playing amongst the Ruins, Royal College of Art, London (2001); City Racing (A Partial History), ICA, London (2001) and Best Eagle, Transmission, Glasgow (2001). Titchner lives and works in London.

Pressetext

Mark Titchner BE ANGRY BUT DON'T STOP BREATHING
Tate Britain, Level 2