Thomas is a two-part exhibition by Danish artist Alexander Tovborg, curated by Kristian Vistrup Madsen. The first chapter is on view in Angles-sur-l’Anglin, while the second will be presented in Paris. For his first solo exhibition in France, Alexander Tovborg has created a new series of icons, accompanied by a text by the curator.

Thomas is the name of the incredulous, the one who responded to Christ’s return with a question: can I touch it?

“It” being the wound. 
“It” being everything, and at the same time always the wound.

To this question, Jesus answered by leading Thomas’s hand to the wound. The wound, in that way, is the site of faith. For what is faith if not a form of doubt management? A framework for the questions that cannot be answered but which keep announcing themselves nonetheless? And we have seen how, in Caravaggio’s picture, the finger went all the way inside, the scene lit up by that painter’s characteristic white light, like a torch.

In western Christianity this is what Jesus did: he provided evidence to the one who needed it. This is also why there is, in the western Christian tradition, a special emphasis on the sex of Christ, and on his suffering: the pleading eyes, the wound that drips graphically from his side down to the crotch – to provide evidence that he was, indeed, not only human but a man; that he really did die and come back to life.

In the Orthodox tradition, the story of Thomas is less about the hand that was moved to touch the wound than about what Jesus said next: blessed are the ones who have not seen the wound – who have not touched it – and still believe. The orthodox believer needs no evidence; their faith is confessed – in the instance of practice, already resolved. This is why, in Orthodox pictures, the figures are restrained and impersonal, not evocative and persuasive, and why Thomas’s act of incredulity tends to be shown from a distance, not, like Caravaggio’s, in medium close-up.

We can understand this suite of works by Alexander Tovborg as icons: repetitive, even formulaic. We can think of each of them as a prayer, a question formulated again and again without the expectation of an answer, though some kind of knowledge, with each one, slowly emerges from out of the depths.  

We can understand this suite of works as icons, and yet something manifests in them that goes beyond the impersonal restraint typical of the Orthodox pictorial tradition: something is undeniably there, flesh-like and full of character, murky and multifarious. Far are they, in any case, from expressions of resolve. 

Their title, simply, is T – and it is from this T that I extrapolate THOMAS, careful not to add his usual moniker of Saint. Because T is so short, a mere sound, and we need further enunciation to be able to speak about doubt. But it is not Thomas that we see in these paintings, and neither is it Jesus. What we see is a figure, a simple form, with barely any indexical features. Some of them are dark, as if charred. Others glow from within. Each will phrase the question in their own way, though none, of course, answer. 

In some we see a hand, almond-shaped. In others, a finger. In some the hand is flanked by its negative space, the wound, and a striking proposition takes the almond shape: the hand is the wound. For a moment, this much is clear. That the very impetus to touch – that is, to doubt – is where suffering is located in humans, and doubt, as we know, shares this location with faith. 

Within this collapse of difference – between hand and wound, Jesus and Thomas – there is suddenly also no difference between touching and not having touched; between evidence and confession, faith and knowledge. We are, perhaps, in a kind of preternatural state where wound, doubt and desire are always-already* as well as not-yet. Where the famous question has not been asked, but there is also no need to. Noli me tangere** said Jesus, but what could he possibly mean? Here Thomas is not Saint, he is not yet even Thomas. He is T, a sign remarkably like the cross, though simpler. A sign that takes its shape after the human body. 

* English translation of « immer schon ».
« Always-already » is a philosophical term describing what is already in place before any experience or thought, without a clearly identifiable beginning. It was notably developed by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time (1927). 

** Noli me tangere (‘Touch me not’) is the Latin version of a phrase spoken by Jesus to Mary Magdalene when she recognised him after his resurrection (John 20:17). 

Alexander Tovborg (b. 1983, lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark) studied at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Karlsruhe, Germany and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Painting, drawing, sculpture, and performance share equal space in Tovborg’s multidisciplinary practice that explores the roles that religion and mythology play in human identity and the world we inhabit.

His research into the origins and contemporary iterations of symbology, mysticism, and religious archetypes has yielded varied bodies of work that span subjects such as the hallucinogenic and erotic first meeting of Adam and Eve, the lost adolescence of Jesus Christ, and a wedding procession of paintings representing the marriage of heaven and hell, among other examples.

His work was presented in numerous institutions, including : ARoS, Aarhus, Denmark ; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark ; Grand Palais, Paris, France ; Museet for Religiøs Kunst, Lemvig, Denmark ; Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde, Denmark ; Camden Arts Centre, London, UK ; Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen, Germany ; AKEN, Copenhagen, Denmark ; Holstebro kunstmuseum, Holstebro, Denmark ; KØS museum for kunst i det offentlige rum, Køge, Denmark ; Spritmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden ; Vejen Kunstmuseum, Vejen, Denmark ; IMMA Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland ; Museo Nacional de la Estampa, Mexico City, Mexico ; Kunsthallen 44 Møen, Askeby, Denmark ; Kunstmuseet Køge Skitsesamling, Køge, Denmark ; Odsherred Kunstmuseum, Asnæs, Denmark ; Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Herning, Denmark ; Hundige Kunsthal, Hundige, Denmark ; Randers Kunstmusem, Randers, Denmark.