• Petri Pan
  • PETRI PAN
  • PETRI PAN
  • PETRI PAN
  • PETRI PAN
  • PETRI PAN
  • PETRI PAN

Aleksi Tolonen

Petri Pan

Uudenmaankatu 6.3.-23.3.2014

Aleksi Tolonen
Petri Pan
Galleria Huuto Uudenmaankatu
6.3.-23.3.2014

My name is Petri Aleksi Tolonen, but I have always been called Aleksi. The only people who call me Petri are passport officers and doctors at the municipal health center. I’m doing okay, but soon I’ll be forty. Wrinkles have appeared in the corners of my eyes and I have started to go bald. I see a physical therapist and do yoga to take care of my bad back. All this is making me edgy…

Often when men go through a midlife crisis they wind up buying a motorcycle or get involved with younger women, my crisis can be seen in my pictures. I have returned to the images of my youth; comics, monsters and heroes. Maybe I don’t want to grow up. Not quite yet. Is it even necessary?

My previous exhibitions have explored masculinity and its different manifestations. This exhibition will touch on these themes as well, but I have given myself permission to play and approach the images of my boyhood with an open mind. I have even given space to the comic-like style of expression that I learned when I was younger, a style of expression that I have previously tried to distance myself from. In this Petri Pan-exhibition, I will briefly become a boy called Petri who is interested in all exciting and slightly dangerous images that relate to boys.