Eros grabs me
Eros tells me what to do
you’re going to live . . . says Eros
you’re going to live inside your flesh.

(Untitled fragment from the poetry collection The bronze arms by Richie Hofmann [Knopf: New York, 2026])

In CLAMP’s main space, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt’s opulent crowns and zany candy dishes feature lollipops of Bill Costa beefcake; the two artists’ contrasting aesthetics ripple through the accompanying salon-style group show, Eros rising, curated by Allen Frame, which tracks a century of erotic tension in photographs, drawings, and paintings by forty-one artists.

Among the highlights in the glimmering echo and sultry undertow are Pavel Tchelitchew’s ink wash of sailors, ca. 1930s; Vicky West’s drawing of an epic fetish orgy, ca. 1970-90s; Alvin Baltrop’s iconic photos from the West Side piers, 1977; Libuše Jarcovjáková’s image of a woman’s bare backside as she leans out a window through lace curtains in 1980s West Berlin; and Oliver Herring’s photos of models from his “Studio” series, 2015-17, using glitter, Mylar, flour, and paint to create mythic intensity.

Desire, longing, fantasy, and spectacle align in a dense array of inter-generational work where cinematic tropes abound: Ann Weathersby’s stacked female portraits smuggled into rose-colored kilnformed glass; Boris Torres’ saucy paintings sourced from 1980s French porn films; Michela Palermo’s smoldering image of a woman’s back, her bra slipping off; Frank Franca’s luminous nude man in boots, standing in a spotlight; Rachel Stern’s seductive gloved hand reaching out from a theater curtain with a leafy philodendron; Shohei Miyachi’s graphic couple (that includes himself) locked in a closeup sex encounter; and Stephen Barker’s enmeshed bodies in an East Village sex club from his “Nightswimming” series.

Juxtapositions heighten the atmosphere of casual intimacy: Mariette Pathy Allen’s trans lovers, one shaving the other’s legs; Kunwar Prithvi Singh Rathore’s bare legs, his own and his queer lover’s, stretched out over a coffee table; and Darrel Ellis’ young friends lounging on a sofa.

Jimmy Wright, with three watercolors from his 1975 Bathhouse series, remembers going to the First Avenue Club Baths and coming upon Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt’s cubicle—lit up with colored lights, he says. Lanigan-Schmidt remembers otherwise: it was not his cubicle (which had just the glow from an 8-watt red light bulb he had installed himself), but the one next door. He could see into it through a hole in the wall. A very large man in a tiny bathrobe had strung up the colored lights and sat munching from a huge bag of potato chips—The Potato Chip Queen, Tommy called him.