Mark Titchner opens at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art

Written by Sanford Williamson Monday, 15 November 2010 22:28

Gateshead, UK - BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art is pleased to announce a major exhibition from UK artist Mark Titchner. The exhibition Run, Black River, Run, comprises two substantial works; Run, Black River, Run eight new billboard-sized banners, each featuring short affirmative slogans, which hang on either side of the space creating a central pathway or aisle leading to The Eye Don’t See Itself, a mesmerizing video installation measuring 6 by 7 metres. 

Run, Black River, Run is the climax of the ongoing relationship between the 2006 Turner Prize nominee and BALTIC. After featuring in two group exhibitions and a small solo show The Future Is Behind Us, BALTIC is delighted to present this new show.

The eight giant banners are displayed on simple scaffolding frames, each presenting a positive slogan against a baroque, graphical background using only three colours: black, white and red. Motifs, such as particular leaves, decals and swirls can be found across all eight works in some form. Each of the short statements is derived from company mission and values statements of the world’s most successful brand. However it is suggested that as none of these slogans directly relate to the purpose of trying to sell a product, in isolation they can be perceived as a programme for self-improvement for the individual.

Despite the magnitude of these slogans Titchner explains: “Nowhere within them do they contain any real information about what they might really mean, let alone how they might actually be ideas that would be implemented in the world. After all, we would all like to ‘Be Real’, but what does that actually mean?”  He adds: “What the emptiness in these slogans reveals is in fact the emptiness in us all. We continue to fall short of these aspirations that we have received, and our happiness will always depend on attaining what we endlessly aspire to.
 
Also being shown in the exhibition is a recent kinetic sculpture, Ur Text  (2006). In addition to the exhibition being shown inside, BALTIC will present a giant banner I Want A Better Me, 2008 on the north face of its iconic building, standing some 18 by 14 meters.

Completing the exhibition is 'The Eye Don’t See Itself' a kaleidoscopic projection of an unblinking eye against a phallic obelisk and presented in front of an endlessly shifting background based on a Rorschach inkblot, commonly believed to represent the father. Below the projection, this image is mirrored in a black reflecting pool. The obelisk and the reflecting pool reference The Washington Monument in Washington DC. The video employs a flickering light at a frequency of 10Hz which corresponds to the brain’s electrical activity in Alpha state as it attempts to alter the perception of the viewer (a reference to the work of the neuro-physiologist W Grey Walter and poet Brion Gysin). The video presentation is accompanied by a softly spoken audio of computerised male and female voices repeating a mantra to psychotic self-improvement: ‘If you don’t like your life you can change it… After all what good is life without conquest?...If you can dream it you can do it.’

Mark Titchner was born in Luton in 1973 and studied at Central St Martins College of Art & Design, London, graduating in 1995. In 2006 Titchner was nominated and short-listed for the Tate Turner Prize. His work also featured in the British Art Show 6 at BALTIC, 2005. Solo exhibitions include; I We It , Gloucester Road Underground Station, London (2004), The Eye Don't See Itself, Vilma Gold, London (2007); IT IS YOU, Arnolfini, Bristol (2006); the Tate Art Now series, Be Angry But Don’t Stop Breathing, Tate Britain, London (2003); Group shows include; When We Build, Let Us Think That We Build Forever, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2007); Sodium & Asphalt, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City and MARCO, Monterrey (2004); Playing Amongst the Ruins, RCA, London (2001); Between Two Deaths at ZKM, Karlsruhe (2007). In 2007 he contributed to the Ukraine Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

To find out more about Mark Titchner as well as other exhibitions at BALTIC visit the BALTIC Library & Archive online database http://archive.balticmill.com  The database contains over 100 films and audio files documenting the artists and their work.

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art is a major international centre for contemporary art situated on the south bank of the River Tyne in Gateshead, England. BALTIC presents a constantly changing, distinctive and ambitious programme of exhibitions and events, and is a world leader in the presentation, commissioning and communication of contemporary visual art. BALTIC has welcomed over 2.7 million visitors, since opening to the public in July 2002.  Admission free.  Visit : www.balticmill.com