Tom's Stretch is a generation-spanning exhibition of works spanning over eighty years by more than seventy artists engaging with Tom of Finland's radical ability to imagine a physique and a world that did not yet exist in popular culture. The exhibition explores how Tom of Finland (Touko Laaksonen, 1920–1991) created a libidinal realm through virtuosic drawings in which freedom and pleasure were the reigning tenets, and how his iconic visual language has influenced countless artists of subsequent generations. The works on view examine expanded, transformative, and more permissive definitions of the body and of art itself, with many pieces transgressing normative representations of the body in favor of more expansive, subjective expressions. The exhibition considers themes of fantasy and wish fulfillment, intimacy and vulnerability, and the body as an instrument for liberation, while also acknowledging Tom's groundbreaking approach to production and distribution through underground networks and alternative media that helped galvanize both a burgeoning punk ethos and a global gay community.
