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Graphic designer Ralf Scheiber (aka P239) depicts gay male sexuality with a whimsical twist, writes Reg Domingo.
 A bookseller, as I once was, would experience a conundrum if they ever had to put Porn*Pops: Daydream by German artist Ralf Scheiber back on the shelf. A lean but exuberant publication, it’s not quite a comic book, a cartoon book, an art book or a graphic art book. Instead, however, it’s all of the above.
Ralf Scheiber (also known as P239) is a creative director of Frankfurt-based Vorsicht, one of Germany’s leading advertising and design agencies. A graphic designer for much of his life, he was recently featured in Stripped: The Illustrated Male, an anthology of illustrations by gay artists from around the world.
“I love erotic photography like Pierre et Gilles, but I’m a very bad photographer,” Scheiber tells SX. “So my next step was to try out pin-up illustrations.”
Daydream, Scheiber’s first monograph, is a collection of playful yet erotic illustrations that blend the worlds of typography, pictography, graphic art, abstract art and comic books. It’s an experimental and unconventional book in an industry that has long been dominated by Marvel-style drawings or fine art illustrations. Seldom has an artist used whimsical stick figures to explore male sexuality to great effect. Scheiber, to his credit, makes no bones about the light-hearted nature of his work: “It’s what it says. It’s a loose collection of fantasies.”
Scheiber studied communication design in Frankfurt before stepping into the world of advertising. He admits to creating much of his work for his own amusement. “Though I’m doing designs all day long I still love to draw in my free time,” he says.
Readers may even recognise Scheiber’s distinct style in this very magazine, whose illustrations were acquired through popular image agency iStock Photo. In fact, Scheiber says, iStock Photo served as the stem from which his works would blossom.
“When I started I thought, if it’s a public database, there should be more gay stuff for people to find, so I uploaded some,” he says. “It’s one of the best stock illustration databases I know.”
Some of those early works are also featured in Daydream.
In constructing his images, Scheiber drew upon references from real life and his own imagination.
“All of them are constructed out of various components. I start by having an idea or question to something like ‘real life sex versus American porno’. Then I search for a pose, a form, a look or a pattern that would fit. This may come from anywhere - magazines, movies, porn, things I see in everyday life. Then I draw it, scan it and digitally redraw it over the scan until it fits … Most have a wide reference to reality or a link to people I’ve met but they don’t display real occurrences.”
Accompanying the images are rations of erotic text but Scheiber eschews a narrative thread in favour of vignettes that are both subtle and brazen. Here, less is definitely more, the artist says, adding that in illustrative erotica, “Literature can be too much”.
Comic, cartoon, graphic art or erotica - no matter the shelf, Daydream ultimately serves as a visual interpretation of one man’s gay erotic fantasies.
“I think it shouldn’t be taken seriously! I had fun doing it. Playing around with fluffy things was one of the ideas of the book, think of soda pop or candy. Sweet and sticky … I don’t know about your daydreams, but a lot of mine have a sexual background.”
Porn*Pops: Daydream is published by Bruno Gmunder and is available from The Bookshop Darlinghurst.
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