Fresh

Collected Works

Mark Titmarsh describes particular points of departure:

layers and transparencies, the reduction of the image, the presence of the brushstroke, creating space without perspective, creating emotional effects without narrative, creating images of the act of creation.

formal issues around the depth and layering; realms of space and depth, spacial depth & emotional depth; tragedy & glory; physical, visceral effects, almost Op Art, of the body, muscles, tendons, the eye, "from a painting by rubens" ....

the work's work is the production of layers - of literal and other uncontrollable readings, a gesture of tears, is this finished?

discovering what imagery is present: does that require active reading? deciphering or constructing? which term do you prefer? are rhetorical questions redundant?

A radical denial of radicality

Motivated by "glorious tragedy" Titmarsh harnesses this plenitude of effects in order to produce replenishment, to realise the work.

The brushstroke recurs and is effaced, printed images seem to deny the presence of a brushstroke. The brushstroke returns as either a printed graphic element, an expressive, exploding cloud of a brushstroke, the symbol of a brushstroke, an image almost disappearing into the haze of a brush and canvas texture, meaty brushstrokes, symbols substituted for brushstrokes ... 

Choice - that is the determining factor: a positive embracement of the 'society of the speculative', always motivated by glorious tragedy, nothing without glorious tragedy, running headlong into the tempest. 

In all of this, remember Nietzche's tendency to always work towards the production of (at least) 'The Third Meaning'', which Barthes chose to call obtuse:

" ... this obtuseness exceeds the anecdote, becomes a blunting of meaning, its drifting. There is in the obtuse meaning an eroticism which includes the contrary of the beautiful, as also what falls outside such contrariety, its limit - inversion, unease, and perhaps sadism." 1

And so...

"Finally consider that even the seeker after knowledge forces his spirit to recognize things against the inclination of the spirit, and often also against the wishes of his
heart - by way of saying No where he would like to say Yes, love, adore - and thus acts as an artist and transfigurer of cruelty .... " 2

Titmarsh seeks after knowledge has passed away.
And as an artist and transfigurer of cruelty he well knows that

"... in all desire to know there is a drop of cruelty." 3

Compiled by Michael Hutak
1 Roland Barthes, The Third Meaning from Image-Music-'I'ext, 1977
2 F,W,Nietzche, Beyond Good and Evil, 229, 1889,
3 F,W,Nietzche, ibid