Predominantly known for his sculptural practice, Mark Whalen’s distinctive approach engages time-worn sculptural formats reimagined through a contemporary and personal lens. Exploring tension, emotion, and complexities found in ordinary life, Whalen is often drawn to historic forms with ceremonial or commemorative foundations, such as busts and totems.
The figures within Whalen’s work are universal, exaggerated, and formally contorted to the point of appearing genderless and ethnically in limbo. Typically rendered in bright colours and made from glass, bronze, onyx stone, or aluminium, these materials share the conceptual parameters of the work, adding weight, contrast and contradictions. These fictional protagonists act as a vehicle to explore relatable everyday situations and in doing so represent the vastness of human emotion. More often than not, Whalen’s firgure are coupled with everyday forms—light globes, food, telephones, pillows, cups—that are stacked like totems or built up around the figure, while flexible hands cup these forms closely. Crafting a narrative of curiosity, inviting an open-ended conversation with the viewer.
Whalen lives and works in Los Angeles; his works have been exhibited in Australia, Asia and North America with recent exhibitions at Harper’s Gallery, New York City, US (2025) Galerie Saenger, Mexico City, MX (2023) and Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Málaga, ES (2021). Whalen’s is in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.