Walking past the free condoms, visitors to New York’s LGBT Community Center this weekend were bombarded from all sides by over 5,000 images of male genitalia.
Every angle and sexual act imaginable was on display, in media ranging from photography and watercolor to print-making and pop art. This was the Painted Boy Gay Erotic Art Fair.
The mission of the fair, which opened April 3 and closed Sunday, was to stir the imagination through the display of unconventional art from over 50 artists. Unlike many exhibitions that are unified by a specific movement or style, the fair was tied together by an overarching theme of sexually explicit acts made public.
One wall displayed disguised erotic photographs, one of which depicted a collection of very ripe and highly pixilated apples. Among the apples, and easily overlooked at first glance, was a pair of testicles.
On the opposite side of the room, a collection of postcard-sized sketches of a wide range of sexual acts, ranging from masturbation to fellatio to intercourse, creatively explored the realm of sexual frustration. Though the sketches were clearly the product of a great deal of passion, they seemed to convey the artists’ personal emotions instead of actively engaging viewers.
Among the more thought-provoking artists at the fair was Erich Erving, GS. After majoring in creative writing at Columbia, he became involved with the Leslie Lohman Gallery. This eventually led him to display and sell his art at Painted Boy. Some of the pieces on display were created at Columbia in a class taught by Kiki Smith.
“Hopefully there’s a difference between erotic art and cock art,” Erving said of his work. “Cock art is an image of what it is. I want to create art that provides people with a way to interact with something that isn’t strictly erotic.”
To create art that engages viewers, Erving uses a great deal of symbolism and biblical references. His venture into the world of visual art, which was driven by his obsession with romantic poet William Blake, clearly displays his background and fascination with the written word. “I am specifically interested in codes, ciphers, and language, and how they can convey meaning through art,” Erving said.
In his work, which consists mostly of cloth prints, Erving employs biblical phrases translated into Polari, a cipher language historically used by gay men. As a Lutheran, Erving uses Polari in his biblical references to explore his idea of multiple identities.
“There is an importance in questioning misconception, in seeing what these texts mean when translated into a language that’s specifically sexual and when paired with images of sexuality,” he said.
Erving’s juxtaposition of the homosexual and the biblical formed an effective, thought-provoking relationship that went beyond the seemingly gratuitous eroticism that dominated a large portion of the fair.
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