HB Nº4 EROTICA | Hb-magazine | Centre Clark

Like fantasy, eroticism is an imaginary construction, the creation of intimate images depicting an activity that must usually take place behind the scenes – the “obscene,” as derived from the Latin term obscena. However, eroticism is not exclusively linked to obscenity or to fantasy. It can be pornographic in close-up or be sentimental, viewed from a hazy, removed perspective. We associate eroticism with desire, attraction, perversion, and the caress – perhaps all of this at once. There is a fine line between eroticism and pain or atrocity, a tension that waivers between pleasure and suffering. In the throws of passion, a face could be mistaken for expressing pain. Fantasy and eroticism both involve the projection or portrayal of a body with/against/in another, of a shared ecstasy, an individual’s satisfaction in imagining what the other would subject them to, or vice versa. Drawing is a privileged form of expression in all of this as it emerges from a blank canvas on which one can freely conceive that which should remain hidden, that which excites, that which hurts through unfulfilled desire or longing. For those who know how, drawing is the simplest way to illustrate eroticism in all of its complexity. For this fourth edition, HB wanted to explore eroticism in drawing and all of the ambiguities that might emerge from this theme when we scratch the surface. We sought the explicit and the suggestive, the sensitive and the delicate, the light and the intense, the non-threatening and the disturbing, revealing through such contradictions all that eroticism can evoke for those who attempt to grasp it before it slips trough their fingers.