Attila Richard Lukas: Recent Work, 1990

Lukacs' recent work at the Kerr Gal­lery, curated by ACA president Robin Mayer, includes two huge figurative paintings, whose "characters" are skin­heads, and other works in which skin­heads appear with monkeys. The skin­head has been in Lukacs' work since Vancouver, but only evolved into a major theme in Berlin.  

Though Lukacs grew up in Calgary, he went to Vancouver's Emily Carr Col­lege of Art, where Mayer was one of his primary teachers. After finishing' art college in 1985, the tall, disarmingly boyish young man, who would look at home on a basketball court, moved to Berlin, where he lives and works. 

Work on four solo shows, in fact, has kept him from paying close attention to the reunification of Berlin, though he says he will return to a different city than the one he left last September. The city has affected his work. The platz or public square in front of a looming neo­classical museum in what used to be East Berlin fills the foreground of the huge untitled painting that dominates the show.  

Nine larger than life-size skinheads look out of the painting at the viewer with cool, appraising gazes, as though you had just walked up and they had just paused in their job of repairing the paving stones. As Lukacs paints them, their presence is immediate and physi­cally palpable. Their scale and direct stares are tools for involvement, pulling the viewer into the work. 

- Larry MacDougal, Calgary Herald,  1990