Mark Whalen

Harper's presents Lighthouse, a special exhibition by Mark Whalen in Santa Monica.

“It was all terrifying. We lost everything,” Whalen told Cultured Magazine after the January fires in Los Angeles. The loss of his home reshaped his in-progress exhibition, infusing it with themes of resilience, impermanence, and the necessity of moving forward.

The show examines the dissonance between upheaval and adaptation, featuring five figurative sculptures in onyx, glass, bronze, and aluminum—materials that evoke both fragility and endurance. The concept of home, profoundly altered by disaster, takes center stage. As Gaston Bachelard noted in The Poetics of Space, home transcends its physicality to become a vessel for memory and identity. This sentiment echoes in Sound Waves, where shells—both communicative devices and shelters—symbolize lost homes, much like hermit crabs seeking refuge.

Whalen’s sculptures meditate on transformation. Hold Tight captures the precarious balance of preservation and change, as a vessel teeters between containment and release. Soft Touch renders a familiar pillow in cold aluminum, evoking the struggle to reclaim comfort after disruption. Manners reflects on grief’s duality—deeply personal yet collectively felt—suggesting that through decorum, we negotiate the weight of shared loss.

At the exhibition’s core stands a sixteen-foot totem, soon to be permanently installed in Silver Lake. Stacked heads, cushions, and a beacon-like summit recall Giacometti’s elongated figures, embodying both vulnerability and strength. More than a monument to survival, it is an ode to collective endurance—how, in crisis, we find solace in one another.

—Lisa Boudet, curator and writer

Mark Whalen (b. 1982, Sydney, Australia) received a degree from Martin College, Sydney; he currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Most recently, his work has been the subject of presentations at Galerie Saenger, Mexico City (2023); Over the influence, Bangkok and Hong Kong (2022, 2020, and 2019); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Málaga, ES (2021); Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne (2019); and Edwina Corlette, Brisbane (2018, 2015, 2012, and 2010). Whalen’s work has been acquired by institutions, including Artbank; Mainland Art Fund, Melbourne; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.