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Events & Exhibitions
Foundation Announcements
Art News
 
Tom of Finland Conquers New York
A Review in Helsinki Sanomat 

Manhattan's Greene Street
The Pleasure of Play advertised prominently on Manhattan's Greene Street.
The Tom of Finland exhibition has received an enthusiastic response.

Exhibition Will Later Move to Kunsthalle Helsinki

From an article by Veli-Pekka Lepp�nen  

 

  More
 
Hypermasculine Gay Images in The Pleasure of Play 
A Review in The New York Times

Tom of Finland Collage 1975
An untitled Tom of Finland work from 1975. With his images of buff gay men, the artist all but invented
the hypermasculine "clone" look of the 1970s, with its defining wardrobe of leather and jeans.
Tom of Finland Foundation Permanent Collectionn


Mr. Laaksonen, who died in 1991, was forthright about his reasons for making his work: In addition to giving expression to his personal fantasies, he wanted to produce an image of gay men that counteracted the atmosphere of oppression and the stereotypes of effeminacy he had grown up with. In the process, he all but invented the hypermasculine "clone" look of the 1970s, with its defining wardrobe of leather and jeans.

 

From an article by Holland Cotter    

 
Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play 
 A Review in Adult Magazine

Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play
Installation view from Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play,
2015 Artists Space. Image courtesy Daniel Pérez.


Touko Laaksonen's work has been elevated to the white cube under the auspices of "anti-normativity." Tom of Finland gives the finger to such earnest critique, then shoves that finger up your asshole and licks it clean.

"Tom of Finland" was the creative pseudonym of Touko Laaksonen (1920-1991), a Finnish artist and ad man best known for elaborate ink drawings of men having sex with each other.  The tableaux are elaborate in their detail, in their execution, and in the elaborate sexual cornucopias they depict. The most notorious are orgies of inexpressible Dionysian dexterity

 

From an article by Fuck Theory


Unseen Working Collages I-V 
An Article in Homme+

Tom of Finland Collage
TOM OF FINLAND (Touko Laaksonen, Finnish, 1920 - 1991), c.1970,
Cut and pasted paper on paper, � Tom of Finland Foundation

Today, there still seems conflict in the fact that the gentle ad man who worked on global campaigns during the 1950s, '60s & '70s, in one of the first global advertising agencies [McCann Helsinki], was the very same artist that gave homosexuality a new and liberated global identity. This is why his collages, his reference material of over 600 pages of neatly composed cut outs from glossy magazines, are so key to a deeper understanding of his work.

Exhibited this summer in their entirety for the first time, alongside over 200 drawings as part of the survey Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play, they are likely to further enhance the reputation of this fascinating man. As his work further evolves from a representation of underground fetish into a mainstream fetish all of its own, let us consider: was there always a sadomasochistic relationship at play between commercial culture and the sub culture?

 

From an article by Stefan Kalm�r

What is an Alien Sex Club?
An Interview in Out There

John Walter about his new work Alien Sex Club

With his daring new immersive installation Alien Sex Club on in London until 14th August, and going to the Homotopia festival in Liverpool on 30th October, boundary-pushing 'maximal' artist John Walter tells us more about this unique work - addressing gay cruising and HIV today with surreal humour.

From an article by Emily Carlton
Racy Tom of Finland Collection 
A Review in Interior Design 

TOM OF FINLAND, Henzel Studio Heritage

TOM OF FINLAND, Untitled, 1979, Henzel Studio Heritage,

Hand tufted, wool, 67 x 96 inches. Image by Tom of Finland Foundation/Henzel Studio.  

 

Few artists have been more provocative-or more revolutionary-than Touko Laaksonen, better known as Tom of Finland. His iconic 1970s and 1980s portraits of macho men in all their glory brought homosexual desire out of the closet and into the mainstream, at a time when even the mildest expression of queer sexuality was forbidden in much of the world. Now, thanks to a collaboration between Henzel Studio, Austere and the Tom of Finland Foundation, fans can finally go home with one of Tom's dreamboats.

 

Henzel based the capsule collection on Tom's original artwork, including some preparatory drawings that have only rarely been shown in public. "In selecting the images," says Joakim Andreasson, Henzel Studio Collaborations and Heritage curator, "it was important to stay true to the artist's body of work, regardless of sexual content."

 


Slash: Between Normative and Fantasy 
A Review in Satori  

INGA MELDERE, Blaumana Room, 2015

INGA MELDERE, Blaumana Room, 2015

 

During the exhibition Slash: Between Normative and Fantasy, Irish voters voted for gay marriage legality and, after a month, the highest court in the United States legalized same-sex marriage in all states.

Kaspars Vanags' exhibition invited a range of artists to participate from both Latvia and foreign countries.

Aroused and Inspired:
Collier Schorr, Carlos Motta,
and Nayland Blake Talk Tom of Finland
A Review in ArtNews
 
Tom of Finland , Untitled 1987
TOM OF FINLAND (Touko Laaksonen, Finnish, 1920 - 1991),
Untitled, 1987, Graphite on paper, � 1987 Tom of Finland Foundation 


"I didn't know that Artists Space had a private sex room that also functions as an auditorium," the writer and curator Bob Nickas observed last night, speaking in the basement of the alternative space's Walker Street bookstore.

Where Tom-as everyone on the panel affectionately referred to him-is concerned, pornography is the elephant in the room. "The problem that we often come up against," Blake said, "is that we are so indoctrinated in the whole idea of talking about pornography as a problem or a lessening of something that, when we find that something is good or appeals to us, we try to rescue it from the pornographic. I don't think we need to do that with Tom."

From an article by Alex Greenberger
The Winning Design for the
New Guggenheim in Helsinki
A Report in CNN Style


Guggenheim Helsinki
Located on the city's South Harbor.

After years of public scrutiny and six months of jury deliberations, the Guggenheim has finally revealed the winner of its Helsinki museum design competition.

 

It is young Paris firm Moreau Kusunoki, which has proposed to break the museum into a series of nine low-slung pavilions, connected by outdoor walkways and oriented to frame views of both the city and the South Harbor where it aims to reside.

 

From an article by Janelle Zara  

The Art of Being a Dirty Fuck
Instigator Magazine - Issue 26

STEVEN GARCIA - Featured Artist

Afterglow
The Hussy -
Studs in Love
 
Sharing a Moment with Durk Dehner
 
At the opening of Slash, Durk met three women from three different Baltic countries.

kim? Contemporary Art Centre in Riga, Latvia is presenting an group exhibition, Slash: In Between the Normative and the Fantasy, which includes work from Tom of Finland, Edgars Ozoliņs and artists from around the world.

While there, I came upon three women: One from Latvia; one from Lithuania and one from Estonia.

The three had come there to empower the Queer Latvians - to support what it takes to move their country forward. They were beaming while viewing the Tom of Finlands so I naturally asked them what it was about his work that spoke to them. They all told me that he made them proud to be Homosexual, that his drawings made them feel happy inside, full of pleasure in being themselves, enjoying life and their sexuality.

We can overcome anything when we tap into the power of being who we are.
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