Marc Van Cauwenbergh

I hate show openings, especially gallery and Broadway shows. I get very nervous — there's too much preening and cruel social positioning. But this opening was different. It was like family for me — familiar people I had been painting and drawing with for almost two years, men whose opinion I'd grown to trust. Our favorite pastime is positive and supportive analysis of each brush stroke and line.

By "family" I mean the Queer Men's Erotic Art Workshop held weekly at the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation Gallery. Our mission is to make art from frankly erotic live nude male models — not an unpleasant task.
This was our second opening. Whereas last year's show title was provocatively called Boy Bordello this year's title was the more mysterious SexComa, borrowed from a classic after-dark comment by Robert Richards about that special place inside themselves that erotic models go to look sexy.

It took almost two months of planning to properly hang the show. Workshop founder and artistic director Harvey Redding again did most of the work with the help of several workshop participants, hanging twice the volume of work (321 pieces by 47 artists) as last year by using virtually every square inch of wall space in an almost overwhelming floor-to-ceiling display of male flesh.

Work was presented frameless with simple white mats and clipped plexiglass for protection. Each piece was raised from the wall with blocks and the cast shadows gave a great framing effect. The vast number of pieces were then hung Victorian Salon style, a gargantuan task, which could only have been achieved by the efforts of a dedicated team.

Even then there was an overflow which spilled out into display cases lining the long hallway that leads to the gallery. Instead of traditional titles the works were identified firstly by the models' names, then the artists' names, media, and prices, which were sur-prisingly affordable.

The work seemed more mature, direct, and sexier than last year, evidence perhaps that the artists have been influencing one another with a healthy exchange of ideas. The subject matter was a given but there was a surprising variety of execution, running the gamut from Marc Van Cauwenbergh's almost expressionist abstractions to the candylike, almost edible eroticism of Robert Richards' highly slylized gay icons.

The enormous variety ranged from the classical masculinity in Rob Hugh Rosen's work to the wispy cloudiness of Elliott Gerber's large romantic pastels, to the alluring accuracy of Tom Saettel's crisp black lines. There were the poetically emotional oil crayon pieces of Dan Romer, further worked with an unusal scraping technique, and the shadowy demimonde stagings in Harvey Redding's vibrantly contrasting color pencil drawings.
Wayne Snellen's pieces employ an additive and subtractive use of pencil and eraser to render an ambigous and sexually provocative display of male physicality. Richard Rosenfeld's master-fully sensual meandering line drawings contrasted with the diversely styled and beautifully rendered work of Peter Liao.

For diversion at the opening, the members got a brief glimpse of a typical evening workshop. The model stand was transformed to resemble a bed, com-plete with satin sheets, pillows, and even tiny lampshades. One of our more alluring models, Johary, posed. Despite his classically beautiful body, thick black shiny hair, starlike eyes and disarmingly sweet smile, he assured me he was nervous posing in front of the continuous flow of invited guests. However, he still succeeded in presenting six very sensual poses. Artists from the workshop were invited to sketch while guests watched or moved about the gallery viewing the exhibit.

In the final pose, Robert Green — bigger, hairier, almost brutally masculine and the model for this year's limited edition show poster drawn by Richard Rosenfeld — joined Johary, gently massaging his creamy body while whispering in his ear. You could've heard a pin drop.

Another model, the boyishly muscular and char-mingly multilingual David, bartended in little more than a worn jockstrap with precum stains which quickly became accented with dollar bills. He unceremoniously ditched the jock when it gave out and could no longer hold all his tips and comfor-tably worked the bar in nothing but army boots and a smile.

Not to be outdone, an ex-navy man, Doug, who'd driven that day all the way from Richmond, Virginia, presented a Tom of Finlandish image in his authentic tailored California highway patrolman's uniform, which he subsequenly doffed for a leather jock and entertained the crowd with shocking tales from the International Mr. Leather competition in Chicago.
For guests not in the market for purchasing original works on paper, there were also more affordable hand-made products in the show's Unique Physique Boutique. Boutique items came from as far away as California, including beautifully hand modeled phallic-shaped neck pieces from Karin Swildens, to homoerotic collages in the style of Russian icons from Jack Summers of Detroit, to a wide variety of printed and uniquely designed underwear by Robert Richards and Luis Martinez. Chris Collicott's astonishingly executed erotic parodies of the 1950's magnetic Wooly Willy, and bathtub plugs, convincingly resembling men's pierced nipples were show favorites. Charles Bjorklund's striking "Scent of Man" labels trans-formed ordinary bottles into erotic conversation pieces.

By almost any measure, whether it be aethetics, attendance or sales, the SexComa show was an unprecedented success. With the workshop starting up again in September, the momentum for next year's show has already begun.