On view from November 2 – December 7, 2024
Saturdays, 12 – 5 pm and by appointment.

Attila Richard Lukacs, Untitled from the Maui series, 2013–2014, oil on canvas, 24 x 18 inches.

Lukacs is best known for his large-scale, ambitious canvases depicting masculine figures in scenes recalling grand history painting. In his exhibition titled HAI'KU LANDS, Lukacs presents several landscapes for the first time painted en plein air in Hai’ku, Hawaii, executed between 2013 and 2014.

Spending the winter months in Maui, the artist painted various views of a friend’s large garden and the surrounding grounds. Previously, Lukacs had painted still lifes outdoors, making arrangements that would expire by the end of the day. In this body of work, he extends his practice to capturing the landscape itself, both the cultivated begonias and hibiscus tree turned into a makeshift drying rack for laundry in the backyard, and the wild cane fields, some alight with fire. The bold, painterly application of paint evidencing the artist’s hand creates a sense of movement and immediacy in the works. Some works place the viewer directly in the fields, rather than at a comfortable distance, teetering on abstraction from a close up perspective. Although devoid of figures, the masterful handling of paint and tension evident in these paintings creates a kinship between these landscapes and Lukacs’ figurative work. As the works were painted outdoors and dependent on natural light, upon his return to Vancouver and his studio, Lukacs has not continued making landscapes.

Born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1962, Attila Richard Lukacs pursued an education at the Emily Carr College of Art and graduated with Honours in 1985. He subsequently moved to Berlin where he worked as an artist for ten years before moving to New York and then Hawaii. He now resides in Vancouver, BC.

Lukacs’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at Wrightwood 659, Chicago; Maureen Paley Gallery, London; Johnen Galerie, Berlin; Vancouver Art Gallery; Edmonton Art Gallery; Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver; Musée d’art Contemporain des Laurentide, (Saint-Jérôme; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and Galerie Schedler, Zürich, amongst many others.

His work is in numerous public collections including public collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Audain Art Museum, Whistler; Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton; Vancouver Art Gallery; Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; Edmonton Art Gallery; Oakville Galleries; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Museum van Hedendaage Kunst; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Schwules Museum Berlin; Froahlich Collection, Stuttgart, amongst others, as well as numerous private collections.