Mark Tholander: Phantoms

Mark Tholander’s (DK) solo exhibition Phantoms explores communities in a fragmentary contemporary world. Phantoms marks the Danish artist’s first solo exhibition in Finland. Combining performance, sound, and sculpture, the haunting exhibition is unlike anything previously presented in Kunsthalle’s history. The exhibition evolves and transforms over the course of its run.

In the exhibition, Tholander transforms domestic furniture into monstrous sculptures that evoke the phantom pains embedded within communities. Communities harbor fears and prejudices both toward themselves and toward the “others” excluded from them. Furniture plays a significant role in the formation of community. Within the home, it acts as the glue of communal life: a source of permanence and familiarity.

An exhibition in a state of constant flux
The Phantoms exhibition is performance-based. During the spring, Tholander performs and continuously reshapes the installation in the Halli space together with a working group. The constantly evolving exhibition reflects the nature of community itself. The ghostlike soundscape of the installation, which changes throughout the exhibition, reminds us that behind every community there lies an entire realm of silent gestures and unseen actors. Communities are built on negotiations that define who belongs and who remains outside as “others.”

In the exhibition, Tholander draws on the aesthetics of body horror and domestication to explore otherness. By tapping into bodily fears and anxieties, he exposes the visible and invisible boundaries communities construct between the familiar and the alien.

The artist
Mark Tholander (DK) is a visual artist, living and working in Copenhagen. Tholander works with performance, sculpture, and video installation to explore community and the social rules that define it.His practice is occupied with challenging the traditional notions of identity, togetherness and belonging.

His works have been shown at Kunsthal Aarhus, Riga Performance Festival, New Media Artspace, and several international film festivals, including in China and France. Tholander is represented in the permanent collection of SMK – Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark).

The opening event of the exhibition is held in conjunction with Kalevan Navetta’s Winter Day event on January 22, 2027.