Changing Room Gallery x The House of St Barnabas presents ‘Paintings With Words Paintings And With Words And Numbers’, a solo exhibition featuring the work of Mark Titchner. This exhibition marks a significant departure for Titchner, as it is his first dedicated entirely to painting, and the works on view represent a new direction in his practice.
Composed of white text upon an inky blue ground, the paintings in this exhibition are the result of Titchner's decision to produce the works by hand, rather than using print as he has largely done in the past. The elements in these paintings have been reduced to a focused minimum, with no distracting baroque or psychedelic devices.
The works are divided into two distinct groups. The first features aphoristic or demonstrative phrases that often quote the language of self-improvement or spiritual enlightenment. The second series, titled "date paintings," references On Kawara's "Today" paintings and Rene Magritte's "The treachery of images (This is not a pipe)" by declaring that each small canvas is not a certain year.
Titchner's work explores the complex and varied belief systems that saturate contemporary culture. He seeks to recontextualise defunct and outdated philosophies and theories, extracting them from their original historical framework to be revaluated in new and hybrid installations. His installations often incorporate a range of mediums, such as wall paintings, digital print, sound and video.
Inspired by diverse sources, Titchner combines and adapts texts that could be found in song lyrics, literature, or philosophical texts. His practice is an investigation of the cultural filtering process that occurs across society, whereby certain elements survive and become popularised while others do not. Through his work, Titchner offers a thoughtful and critical perspective on the ever-changing landscape of contemporary culture.
