EMERGING ARTIST COMPETITIONS

PURPOSE

The purpose of this contest is twofold: to encourage artists to share their erotic work and to elevate the field of erotic art by rewarding some of the best current examples.

The contest is open to any artist with the exception of previous winners of this contest, or artists who are already selling erotic work commercially. All others are eligible: advertising designers, art students, or just midnight doodlers — anyone who creates erotic works of art.

COMPETITIONS
The Appropriation Controversy

"Velázquez move over"

  2022
  2020
  2014
  2009
  2005
  2003
  2001
  1999
  1997
  1995
This contest was covered in our Spring 1996 issue. It was our second contest — and our most controversial!
  1993

LIST OF JUDGES FROM PAST EACs

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Honey Dijon

Born and raised in Chicago, Honey Dijon grew up surrounded by House music, and the creative souls who started the global movement. After moving to New York to DJ, she worked her way up through the nightlife scene, eventually establishing residencies at Hiro and Battle Hymn, sometimes playing sets up to twelve hours long.

At the same time, the New York fashion crowd started to take note. Dijon’s ability to express herself through her art, fashion and music lead her to becoming one of the most sought-after hitmakers for runway shows, such as Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior. Such ability to transcend both the music and fashion scenes made launching her fashion line Honey Fucking Dijon a natural progression of her talents.

Music, fashion, and art all collide in her interdisciplinary approach. Dijon splits her time between Berlin and New York City.

@honeyfuckingdijon

Mr Gruts Detail

Mr Gruts

The artist known only as Mr Gruts works as a figurative illustrator specializing in homoerotic, digital painting and comic illustration.

After completing his Bachelor of Fine Art in New Zealand, Mr Gruts didn't develop his illustrative ability until later. In 2020, Mr Gruts was the winner of both the Dean Cameron Multiple Figure Award and the Tom of Finland Grand Prize Award during the tenth Emerging Artist Competition held by Tom of Finland Foundation.

The Grand Prize was a valuable achievement to him, as he had never previously won a juried art prize. It also served to affirm Mr Gruts’ professional development. Since then, he regularly pushes himself to release steady artistic output to his growing audience. Mr Gruts is enjoying his newfound ability to support himself financial with the growth he has experienced since winning the Grand Prize.

A firm believer in the "sex is fun" mindset, Mr Gruts celebrates this mantra in his art by mixing narrative tonalities. He is also passionate about intersectional representation and is happy to see this gradually reflected in broader adoption in contemporary media.

Mr Gruts lives and works in his native New Zealand.

@mrgruts

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Glenn Martens

A native of Flemish Belgium, Glenn Martens graduated first in his class from The Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. In 2008, during his final year, he was recruited work at Jean Paul Gaultier and G2. Martens later became first assistant to designer Yohan Serfaty, after which Martens worked independently with European brands such as Weekday (H&M) and Honest By Bruno Pieters.

By 2012, Martens launched his eponymous womenswear line during Paris Fashion Week, and since 2013, he has been the Creative Director of both womenswear and menswear for the Paris-based label Y/PROJECT.

In 2017, Martens was named to Business of Fashion’s 500 Index of people shaping the industry. He also received the ANDAM prize for his work with Y/PROJECT. In 2018, Martens partnered with DIESEL on the company’s Red Tag project, staging a fashion show on the streets of Paris that saw denim and leather transformed into draped button-down shirts and bootcut trousers.

Martens and Y/PROJECT received a special prize—the Family Fund Award—from ANDAM in 2020. That same year, Martens was named as Creative Director of DIESEL, while still at the helm of Y/PROJECT.

@glennmartens

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Richard Meyer

Richard Meyer is the Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor in Art History at Stanford University, where he teaches courses in twentieth-century American art, censorship, and gender and sexuality studies.

He is the author of Master of the Two Left Feet: Morris Hirshfield Reconsidered (MIT Press 2022) to published with a retrospective of the artist opening at the American Folk Art Museum in September. His first book, Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art (Oxford University Press 2002), was awarded the Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Outstanding Scholarship from the Smithsonian American Art Museum and is now in its third edition.

Subsequent books include What Was Contemporary Art? (MIT Press 2013), a study of the idea of “the contemporary” in American art, and Art and Queer Culture, a survey co-authored with artist Catherine Lord focusing on the dialogue between visual art and non-normative sexuality.

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Slava Mogutin

Born in Siberia, Slava Mogutin is a New York based Russian-American multimedia artist and author exiled from Russia for his outspoken Queer writing and activism.

A third-generation writer and self-taught photographer, he became the first Russian to be granted political asylum in the US on the grounds of homophobic persecution. Informed by his bicultural dissident and refugee experience, Mogutin’s work examines the notions of displacement and identity, pride and shame, devotion and disaffection, love and hate.

Mogutin is the author of seven Russian-language books, three monographs of photography, Lost Boys (powerHouse Books, 2006), NYC Go-Go (powerHouse Books, 2008), and Bros & Brosephines (powerHouse Books, 2017), and two illustrated collections of poetry, Food Chain (ITNA Press, 2014) and Pictures & Words (Straight to Hell Editions, 2018).

Mogutin is the winner of the Andrei Bely Prize, the oldest independent literary prize awarded in Russia, and Tom of Finland Foundation’s 2018 Achievement Award for artistic achievement and personal accomplishment.

@slavamogutin

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Graham Steele

Graham Steele is the founder and principal of his eponymous art dealership, Graham Steele Inc., based in Los Angeles. Prior to 2020, Steele was partner and sales director at Hauser & Wirth, where he was tasked with establishing that firm’s new Los Angeles gallery in the Downtown Arts District.

Before moving to California, Steele spent over a decade in London, first at University College London where he attained his Master of Arts in the History of Art. He later joined Sotheby’s as a specialist before moving to White Cube as director, where he launched that gallery’s Hong Kong outpost.

Steele also works closely with a slate of artists, estates, and foundations in an advisory role. A prolific collector himself, Steele has a vested interest in Queer artists and Queer representation in art.

A designer with a curatorial approach to fashion making and brand building, Jonathan Anderson earned both critical acclaim and commercial success with the collections he designs as the creative director of LOEWE and for his eponymous label, JW Anderson. An alumnus of London College of Fashion, Anderson was the first fashion designer to be awarded, in 2015, both Menswear and Womenswear Designer of the Year by the British Fashion Council. Anderson has created collections and products collaborating with noteworthy brands. In 2016 he founded the LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize, the world's first international award for contemporary craft and in 2017 he curated Disobedient Bodies, an exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield in Wakefield. In 2019, the Prime Minister of Britain appointed Jonathan Anderson to the Trustees to the Board of the V&A, one of the world’s leading museums of art and design.

@jonathan.anderson

Seth Bogart is an artist & musician living in Los Angeles.  He has exhibited work at Participant INC, Artist Curated Projects, One Archives, MoCA, 356 S Mission, FIERMAN, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and others.  Bogart releases music under his name and also with Hunx and His Punx. His new solo album is called “Men on the Verge of Nothing”.

@sethbogartofficial

Nao Bustamante is a internationally renowned artist, residing in Los Angeles. Bustamante's precarious work encompasses performance art, video installation, filmmaking, sculpture and writing. Bustamante is alum of the San Francisco Art Institute, New Genres program and the Skowhegen School of Painting and Sculpture. Currently she holds the position of Professor of Art at the USC Roski School of Art and Design. There, she also serves as the Director of the MFA in Art.

@naobustamante

Matt Lambert is an LA-born, Berlin-based filmmaker and photographer whose work blurs the line between fine-art, fashion, documentary, and porn - collaborating with everyone from Calvin Klein to Christeene to Celine Dion to The Cock Destroyers. One of his most recent projects, "Pleasure Park", is a docu-youth-punk-lust-fest in collaboration with MEN.com — both a film and his fifth book.

@dielamb

Felipe Meres was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1988 and currently lives and works in New York. Solo exhibitions include The Telomeric Cut at Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2017) and Fsision at Company Gallery, NY (2016). His work has been shown in venues such as the Ljubljana Biennial, Slovenia (2019); Cuenca Biennial, Ecuador (2018); GAMeC, Italy (2018) and the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, FL (2016). He was an artist in residency at Casa Wabi, Mexico (2018); ArtCenter/South Florida, FL (2016) and Escola de Verão, Capacete, Rio de Janeiro (2012). He holds an MFA from the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College, NY and is currently pursuing a PhD in Anthropology at The New School, NY. He is the recipient of the 2016 Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation Grants & Commissions Award and of the 2014 Tom of Finland Foundation Emerging Artist Grand Prize.

@felipemeres

Silvia Prada is a New York based artist whose figurative handmade drawings celebrate gay iconography and popular culture. She started illustrating for some of the most influential international magazines of the 1990s: Dazed & Confused, Interview and The Face. Prada’s work have been showcased at many art fairsand galleries and has published five art books with her drawings. Prada’s accessibility and her closeness to gay pop culture as a visual artist makes prominent members of the fashion and cultural elite proud to collect her work.

@silviaprada

Martín Sorrondeguy is a visual artist, photographer, and musician. Sorrondeguy has published three photography books and has exhibited in numerous countries. The core of Sorrondeguy’s work is about addressing inequities through the creation of physical and artistic space—first as the singer for the internationally renowned politically charged punk en Español hardcore band Los Crudos. For the last 20 years Sorrondeguy has been the singer for the beloved hardcore radically and openly queer punk band, Limp Wrist. He continues to work on various projects, both as a musician, and visual artist.

@martincrudo

The art podcast, "Talk Art", was developed in 2018 as a passion project by award-winning actor Russell Tovey and gallerist Robert Diament and has grown into a highly successful show listened to by millions of fans around the world. Tovey has been a passionate collector for over a decade, starting his collection with a print by the much-loved artist Tracey Emin. It was at a dinner in 2008 honouring Ms. Emin that the pair met and have been ‘art geek’ friends ever since. Diament has a master’s in art history and is currently the director of Carl Freedman Gallery in Margate, Kent, where he has worked for over a decade. He also used to be the front man of a successful English electronic rock band called Temposhark.

@talkart

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Eli Sudbrack, born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil and New York City, USA. Christophe Hamaide-Pierson, born in Paris, France. Lives and works in Paris, France

Elmgreen and Dragset
Michael Elmgreen, born in Copenhagen, Denmark. Lives in London, UK, and works in Berlin, Germany. Ingar Dragset, born in Trondheim, Norway. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Richard Hawkins
Born in Mexia, Texas, USA. Lives and works in Los Angeles, USA.

Ryan Heffington
Born in Yuba City, California, USA. Lives and works in Los Angeles, USA.

Bruce LaBruce
Born in Southhampton, Ontario, Canada. Lives and works in Toronto, Canada.

Helmut Lang
Born in Vienna, Austria. Lives and works in New York City and Long Island, USA.

Linder
Born in Liverpool, UK. Lives and works in St. Ives, UK.

A.L. Steiner
Born in Miami, USA. Lives and works in Los Angeles, USA. ordion Sample Description

Kat Coric
Multidisciplinary artist, producer, and art collector.

Dr. Laura Henkel
Resident Curator and Art Director for the permanent and special exhibits for the Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas, NV. Founder of Henkel Enterprises LLC. Founder of Laura Henkel Fine Art.

Jay Jorgensen
Photographer. Winner of the 1999 EEAC

Marco Livingstone
Art historian and independent curator.

Michael Taubenheim
Photographer. CEO of Bruno Gmunder

Charles Cowles
Proprietor of The Charles Cowles Gallery, NYC.

John McConnell
Collector, San Diego.

Petra Sarias
Information officer Press and Cultural Affairs, Consulate General of Finland in New York, NYC.

David Stern
Co-publisher of In Los Angeles Magazine.

Eli Wardi
Artist. Joint Grand Prize Winner 2003 Emerging Erotic Artist Contest.

Cliff Benjamin
Co-owner of Western Project gallery.

Henning von Berg
Berlin, Fine Art Photographer

Edward Lucie-Smith
London, Art Critic, Historian and Author

Nelson Santos
New York, Assistant Director, Visual AIDS

Eric Singley
Los Angeles, Curator, The Erotic Museum

Wayne Snellen
New York, Director, the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation

Gordon Baldwin
Curator

Cliff Benjamin
Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica

Nayland Blake
Artist and professor at Bard College New York

Gisela Schadel
Erotic Art Museum, Hamburg Germany

Stewart Hardman
Adonis Gallery, London, England.

Darrel Leibert & Daniel Voran
Publishers of Handjobs mag. Seattle WA

Susanna Luoto
Finnish public relations agent specializing in erotic art events, Helsinki Finland

Matthew Pawlowski
Proprietor, ESP Art Gallery, San Francisco

Bill Paul
Professor of art at the University of Georgia

Kelly McCray
Proprietor of the Edward Day Gallery in Toronto Canada

Michele Hunter
Editor several Art & Photo Mags. Sydney, Australia.

Bill Schmeling
aka. The Hun (Artist) of Portland, Oregon

Peter Sparrow
Designer, New York City

Bruno Billion
Journalist Arts Mags & ProjetX translator of the French edition of "Tom of Finland: His Life and Times" Paris, France

Micha Ramaker
Writer of intro to “Art of Pleasure”. Brussels, Belgium

Volker Janssen
Art book publisher,Berlin Germany

Tom Bianchi
Photographer, Los Angeles

Meeka Walsh
Editor of Canada's Border Crossings

Wayne Baerwaldt
Gallery director, Winnipeg Canada

Nayland Blake
Artist and curator, San Francisco

William Doan
Director, Doan Family American Photography Archive, Ft. Dodge, Iowa.

Dr. Angelika Muthesius
Cologne Germany

Richard Marshall
Curator, New York City

Hudson
Owner of Feature Gallery, New York City

Louis Madripilias
Los Angeles

Rip Colt
Los Angeles