Listened to this while working today, and as big fans of acid, we love it. Cool to see a friend of the house growing a evolving.
El Corruptor
The Darkroom Review: Maze Den Haag
Fun is not a word I would use to define my time in The Hague at KABK. Yes, it shook the basis of my understanding of art, forced me to confront how people see what I do, and question the spaces my work should inhabit. But after 8 years living in the Netherlands, it is hard for me to think fun is something you can find in The Hague. A dreadful path of struggles and self-doubt, for sure, but fun? Never seen her. Yet, if there is something the city can do, it is to tease you with the promise that, somewhere, there is much more than what you are seeing. Once a guy told us that The Hague has one of the most vibrant and evasive underground scenes in the country, and I believe him because any evidence of an out-of-the-norm life has totally evaded me, except at two places: the gay cruising nude beach, and Maze, a darkroom a hundred meters away from my old studio at KABK.
Divided into two sections, a sex shop at the front of the store and a labyrinth-shaped darkroom at the back, Maze is the closest cruising place you can find to The Hague central station. My first impression of the place is always the smell, a mix of plastic and poppers that hits you like a wall as soon as you cross the entrance door. I was prepared to be welcomed by the archie-sexy Gideon, but instead, at the cash desk was working the “Limp guy”, a character responsible for most of the complaints about the venue on Google Maps, and who, contrary to the bad reviews, has always been very nice to me. While paying the entrance fee (10 euros including a euro coin for the locker), he explains to me that is Tuesday’s naked party, hence I must undressed, which I did, only to be remembered that this is The Hague and naked means keeping your underwear, so for the rest of the night I was the only naked person between halfdressed people covering their crotches while walking around.
The evening was slow, and there was a silent agreement that the few guys at the venue did not want to have sex with each other, resulting in them all being located at the entrance of the darkroom in dire need of someone new to shake the dynamic up. Between the sex shop and the cruising area in Maze, there is a heavy plastic curtain that makes a very specific sound. Once you enter, you see the lockers, two big rooms showing straight and gay porn, a toilet, a urinal with a shower next to it, and a hidden room with two chairs, a mirror, and a screen. On quiet days, some regulars wander between those rooms and corridors idly, and as soon as they hear the sound of the curtains, quickly move to the back of the store where the maze and gloryholes are located. There, each one has their strategy for the hunt.
However, that night nothing was happening, and to fight boredom, I tried to start some conversations, but if it is already difficult to talk with gay guys in a cruising context when you are dressed, imagine being the only naked person in the whole venue. I could feel I made people uncomfortable just by getting closer to them. A beautiful young guy, someone you would see in a hip place in Amsterdam more than in Maze, took my talking as the definitive cue to leave, quickly dressed, and walked out without looking back or replying to my greeting. A couple more failed attempts, and I finally managed to talk with a guy in his 30s who told me he enjoyed that “management improves the music”, and he heard the good time to visit was not during the parties, but at lunch hours. So I chose to leave and come back at lunch break another day.
It was Friday, and Maze was full of people who could cruise at 14:00: unemployed or retired. Still no Gideon in sight. I noticed most of the action was happening in the screening rooms close to the entrance. An old guy with a chain necklace, jockstrap, and a Prince Albert was getting sucked surrounded by a group of guys jerking off and looking at him. A similar circle jerk scene was happening in the other cinema. That day, I finally understood the layout of the mysterious room with two chairs and a mirror. One guy sits in the center to jerk off and look at the screen, while someone can sit on the second chair, waiting for the sign to blow the person in the center off. The mirror gives another view to the blowee. Although it is not as professional as other darkroom setups and feels a bit Ikea, the idea behind it is quite sexy. Better done than perfect.
Determined to compensate for the disappointment of my previous visit, I went to the back section where all the cabins are. In Maze, everything is connected, meaning all walls have a hole, either for a blowjob or to peep inside. You learn where the holes are by looking at how other patrons behave. I walked around to sense the day’s vibe, and I saw a guy lying down totally still, as if he was sleeping; David Hockney; a beautiful chubby guy who locked himself alone in a cabin; and other retirees looking to snoop some action. The lights that day were particularly strong, and blinded for a second, I bumped into a two-meter figure who efficiently moved me aside and kept walking. When I could see again, I distinguished a very tall grandpa wearing a red wig, red top, black miniskirt, torn fishnet tights, and black high heels, all very unsuccessfully feminine. It was almost intentionally showing the lack of effort. Again, I guess better done than perfect.
If I have to describe the behaviour of most visitors to Maze, I would say they vary in age and mostly feel closeted. They enter without making eye contact, go directly to the cabins, and put their dick inside the gloryhole without caring much what’s on the other side. For the rest of the attendees, who are there to suck dick, it seems like the ideal situation until the DL top turns around and starts begging to be fucked. Then both cabins open, and the dynamic kicks off again, repeating until there is a match. I like to see who ends up with whom.
I heard the sound of the curtains and saw a massive two-meter-tall white guy, clearly closeted, covering part of his face with a cap. You can picture a wife, two kids, and 30 years shared mortgage on a house in Rijswijk. People ran to the back and positioned themselves in different cabins waiting to be selected by the new guy. I was late in the race to the maze, so I had to stand up under a red bulb in the corridor, in direct view of the moment when the massive guy got closer to the cross-dressed grandpa, and together got into a cabin. I moved and snuck into the crowd looking inside through the multiple holes; they were surrounded. What a sight the massive guy was, his skin looking like Greek marble, tights that could end world hunger, and a face that could not hide excitement. I find it a bit of an overreaction because the cross-dressed grandpa was giving him an extremely uncommitted handjob. The whole scene reminded me of Sister Hong, and made me wonder if, in general, I would enjoy cruising more if I wore a wig. Annoyed by all the people peeping, the grandpa started desperately covering the holes with their hands. When they covered mine, I saw the shine of a wedding ring.
Maze does not feel the same. I am aware my opinion is distorted by nostalgia, and the things I have done and tried since then, but I cannot shake the feeling that if gay life has changed for the worse in the last 8 years in the Netherlands, it is more evident in places like Maze, where the fringes and the center of the gay spectrum meet. Long gone are the days when I used to steal poppers from people hiding them in my socks, or when I met a sex addict with whom I felt was melting into a single blop of pleasure while smelling his armpits. There is no Gideon to ogle while smoking and trying to make small talk, and no naked people at its naked parties. When walking out that Friday, I saw a muscular black guy who looked at me up and down and popped his tongue. I recall a Dominican athlete I met once there, a monumental body of muscles who, after doing whatever he wanted with me, gave me a miniskirt as a token of appreciation so I could “look like a woman”. Maybe then, he already knew the secret to finding joy in cruising.
Anemone Me
Many interpretations of this short film see a tale of a black bodybuilder falling in love with a magical creature (merman) as an allegory of queer love. However, we see it the other way, a fantastical creature captivated by a human, and the sacrifices that said creature is willing to make to be their eyes.
Colin Farrell wearing a thong
A reminder that we all start somewhere, many have a twink past, and a call for more slutty looks in the current media.
Screenshots Porno II
This batch of paintings was done this year without a time limit, yet they should be around the 20-40 min range. The first thing we notice while doing them is that we tend to make the image lighter than the source, and we are reaching a point where we see more blocks of values than actual objects. We agree, then, that all painting is abstract. The screenshots were taken mostly from videos found on ThisVid, and there is something very refreshing about people just recording themselves for pleasure, without the need to monetize or fear of exposure. The internet is deffo not fun anymore.
New Stickers by El Corruptor
Back in 2016, we used to make sticker sheets in an almost artisanal way. We would go to el Ricaurte, a neighborhood in Bogotá where many printing services are concentrated, stop at one shop to print five meters of our designs on vinyl, leaving the layout in the hands of the shop assistant, and then, two hours later, rush to another shop for the kiss cut, hoping the files from two different places would somehow align and leave us with a sticker sheet by the end of the day. Every time the cutting guides shifted, the machine would begin slicing into the illustration, forcing the operator to stop the process and manually reposition the five-meter print by eye until the run was complete. We would like to offer a public apology to everyone involved in the production of our stickers between 2015 and 2016, for being the most insufferable clients with the most annoying task someone can get in a printing shop. We still remember the look on the face of an operator who, devoid of all hope, confessed to us that we had been working for ten hours and had two more to go; it was 20:00. After a day of torturing people in el Ricaurte, we would go back home and cut the roll into individual, randomly placed sheets. That is the reason why our sticker sheet looked like this:
And yes, we would have sold that. Ten years later, and with more experience in printing and production, we felt it was about time to make something again for El Corruptor. As the image above shows, we are strong believers that something is better done than perfect, yet we had some conditions for the production: we wanted to work with a single supplier, and we wanted to be in control of the process and numbers. Finding a supplier took us three months. The first attempt of making a sticker sheet was the Pinpin design, printed in China. The quality and printing possibilities are great, but we do not speak Mandarin, so we felt the prices for an actual production were too high. We considered, then, to produce the sticker in Colombia, but the economy in the country has changed a lot since our humble beginnings, and the price of printing a sticker sheet was 50 cents cheaper than in Europe. Insane. The final, and more logical choice, was to print them in the Netherlands.
As poor artists, we have always supported affordable prices. However, the economic conditions in 2026 make it impossible for a small business to compete on price. It looks grim, but unless you have a strong financial muscle, it is getting very hard to have your own business in the current economy. This should be a sign that we must support small businesses and make our own weird projects to prevent an uninspiring environment where only those with money keep putting things in the world. The 15 euros make our sticker sheet closer to the prices found for artists in conventions and not other gay artists, but we did the best to include taxes and shipping (except the single posters). It is the most sustainable price we could give.
Now, talking about the designs, we have the Chastity and Bouldering sticker sheets. We cannot remember when was the first time we came across a chastity cage, but they have grown so much in popularity and complexity of designs that it was impossible for us not to make a small homage to them as objects we love. The idea came to mind one afternoon, seeing a couple choosing chastity cages for each other because they were getting married. Were they taking turns to fuck each other? Were they a two-bottoms relationship? Too many questions and not enough context! The picture was enough to push us to make this illustration, and now a sticker sheet is printed on transparent vinyl. They ended up choosing two flat cages, respect!
The Bouldering design was inspired by an old hookup, a climbing enthusiast whose group of bouldering friends later showed us that horniness and sexual fluidity were kinda the norm in that context. This is totally anecdotal evidence, but we did the research, and the archetype of a guy who loves being barefoot, lives in a messy room full of mandalas and Tibetan prayer flags, would fuck your brain out on a mattress on the floor, and then ghost you kept repeating itself often enough to be considered a thing. Regardless, they have beautiful bodies, strong grips, and are very flexible, which is always sexy. The sticker sheet is printed on white vinyl with tinny dick and asshole shape holds.
El Corruptor’s webstore is now live in trial mode. Continuing the saga of paying more as a small business, finding a payment platform was a whole task. Even though we don’t believe our work is particularly radical, owing to its sexual tone, most payment providers do not want to get involved and tag us as a risk to their business model. We mention this because it is important for other artists working with themes about sexuality to consider that their work will face challenges not only to get exposure on social media, but also in finding services that allow their basic function online. Shipping does not change between one or three items, hence the sticker and poster packs were made thinking of people who would be interested in getting more, while keeping the shipping cost included.
We are trying the current supplier, payment provider, and shipping method with PostNL, so please be patient with us while we tune things up.
Screenshots Porno I
The best way to learn how to paint is to do it in black and white. That way, color is not a distraction, and the focus goes directly to value. We are not painters, or rather, we are terrible painters. Yet we are trying to change that, working on small paintings with a 20-minute execution limit and a huge brush. They are bad, almost embarrassing to show, so the only way we found to compensate for the frustration of the ugly result was to look for subjects that were enticing to paint: screenshots from pixelated amateur porn. This batch is actually from last year, another day we will post the late one and see if there are any improvements.
The Darkroom review: Free Willie
Something nobody tells you when you are young is how much of adult life follows the same patterns you already know from high school. If we look back at our teens and the schools we went to, the experience was not particularly dreadful, but definitely not the golden years of self-discovery, parties, and sex that are the usual depiction of high school in the media. Our memory of that time is a long period of boredom, external duties, and unspoken social rules that you were expected to follow but never agreed to. Later in life, when you meet a new friend who is desperately seeking approval by constantly telling stories about how amazing their life is, you will think: high school. When a group of colleagues is clapping to every poor decision made by the manager and deciding who can have lunch with them, high school will come to mind. And when a group of clicky handsome gays set the mood of a whole party, you will grunt: high school.
For a while, we have been looking for a life drawing group where we can practice figure drawing with a model, a particularly hard skill that we are not good at. So when we saw that Free Willie, the latest addition to Amsterdam cruising clubs, has a clothing-optional life drawing event, we felt the call to go. The 18 euros admission fee covers 2 hours of drawing and materials, including unlimited paper and charcoal bars, which is a great deal for Amsterdam. Most of the people were already on an assistance list, but you can get a bracelet at the entrance. Although it says clothing-optional, many people were naked, and we did not want to be rude, so we undressed jumping on one leg in the small corridor while hanging our clothes from the dick-shaped hook on the wall.
The venue is small and nicely designed; you can see the attention to detail. The drawing session was on the dancefloor, next to the DJ booth, with people seated on stools, on top of the pool table -officially Free Willie is a naked pool bar-, and the sofa next to the entrance. The atmosphere was very friendly, with most participants in the 30+ age range. The model doubles as a host, leading the session. We started with 5 minutes “quick poses”, but soon realized he was not an experienced model. Do not get us wrong, he was an amazing host and made the whole experience very entertaining, but in terms of modeling, he only had one pose. After the short poses, we did some small challenges that people could win and get a paintbrush; the person with the most brushes would get the highest price of the night.
“The next challenge is to make the most anatomically accurate drawing of my willie”. Kudos for the bravery of letting a group of gay guys trigger any new and old body dysmorphia issues you can have by looking and drawing your dick for 20 minutes. Until then, despite being part of a graphic gay project, we were failing miserably during the event, so we saw this chance as a way to redeem all those hours of looking and drawing strangers’ dicks from photos and finally win a paintbrush. Then, we tried some shading by smudging the charcoal. Yet, the result was disgusting. It was the model’s willie indeed… after skinny-dipping in a lake full of radioactive wastewater.
We continue with some two model poses, imaginative drawings, and more small challenges. We felt sorry for the host, who was leading the session while skillfully navigating a drunk Dutch guy who was openly flirting with him and making jokes that nobody found funny. Let’s call it Dutch directness to what in other countries would be considered as being unable to read the room. For the final challenge, we made groups to draw the model -in the same initial pose- each focusing on a single body part. Our group consisted of a friendly couple wearing matching cock rings, a senior guy, and us. We had to draw the left arm, and our group ended up winning that challenge, but it was not enough to get the higher price of the night: a free entrance to the gay sauna.
Once the live drawing is over, the techno music is on, the venue is filled with smoke, and people are supposed to dance. But the place was half empty at 10 pm. We started a conversation with an Iranian guy who was very pleased with the latest bombing in Iran. We asked for a beer to the barman who replied “bottom or top?”. Confused, but not surprised by the sauciness of calling drinks in some gay bars, we answered “…bottom??”. The barman rolled his eyes, already feeling it was going to be a long night, and gave a drink. Later, we understood he asked “bottle or tap?”. More people arrive, some we’ve seen in Church or the sauna, many going to the dark area next to the bar, when we started noticing something we have repeatedly seen in Amsterdam: hot guys fucking between each other, and the rest of the people looking at them and not doing anything.
Perhaps, we are asking too much of a venue. Or perhaps, we do not know our place in the hierarchies that determine who fucks or not in some cruising places. But we cannot help but find extremely boring the common dynamics where hot people fuck between them, while all the others look and do nothing all night. “I like to see handsome people fuck” says the Iranian guy, “they have the pretty privilege”. We saw the drunk Dutch guy, who was annoying everyone during the drawing club, fucking a handsome guy on a sofa, and we noticed that, despite not being attractive, he was very popular, which brought an uncomfortable feeling: how in some cruising places in Amsterdam, the idea of beauty is linked to whiteness. And we know that, in a moment when social media has flattened everything to the most simplistic definitions, talking about whiteness as a uniform concept is not helpful, because even within the concept white there are differences. But in our experience in Amsterdam, if you are a tall, younger-than-50, lean white guy, even if you are not attractive, you would do well. If you are not white, then you need features that compensate for such as muscles, a beard, youth, height, a big dick…
Let us be clear here, this is not a diatribe against smoking hot white guys; they can fuck whoever they want. This is a call to everyone to start enjoying their sexuality without wishfully waiting for the popular kids’ validation by noticing them. Or even further, to break the unfounded belief that linked the idea of beauty with enjoyable sex. Sexuality is a connection, and a chiseled body doesn’t guarantee that. “Do you know a place a bit more active?” asked a guy from Lebanon we had sucked before. We looked around, an empty dancefloor framed by naked guys holding their beers. “Anywhere” was the only answer we could give. We tried to approach the friendly couple wearing matching cockrings who were part of our drawing group, but they were in cruising mood, and we were not cool enough to relate to them.
It was 12:00 a.m., and the palace was getting emptier and emptier. We entertained ourselves for a while watching an old daddy covered in geometric tattoos dance alone at his own party, unconcerned with the lack of party around him. Guess we also wishfully look at people in these cruising clubs. When he left, it was our call too. We saw a new wave of hot guys getting undressed in the corridor: big pecs, round asses, 190 cm, flat bellies, perfect skin. Amsterdam always has beautiful people hanging out together. While walking to the central station, we remembered the first time we saw a naked guy was at a life drawing class in Bogota when we were teens, which was a whole different experience from our routine at school. Maybe we should start our own life drawing club in Schiedam. We thought about the popular kids in high school and wondered if they had an Elite sex life, or if it was as unsexy as ours, a time we wouldn’t go back to.
