Attila Richard Lukacs

Click, Whir, Click, Wir | Attila Richard Lukacs "After Goya" is one of the ober-masculine images collected at the AGAs Polaroids exhibit.

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POLAROIDS
Art Gallery of Alberta
Saturday, March 7 - Monday, May 18

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Art Gallery of Alberta

This week, Mandy and Jill head to the Art Gallery of Alberta to view the highly anticipated exhibition Polaroids: Attila Richard Lukacs and Michael Morris, featuring work by the internationally renowned (and locally spawned) Attila Richard Lukacs.

Jill: I’ve heard bits and pieces about Lukacs from various sources over the last year, so when the AGA developed this exhibition, I was excited to finally get the opportunity to see his paintings and photos in real life. This particularly show consists of themed batches of Polaroid pictures framed in small, neat white frames, as well as five huge paintings that relate to the photographs.

Mandy: This is the first time Lukacs’ Polaroids have been a part of any exhibition. They were selected from literally thousands, grouped together and curated by his longtime friend Michael Morris, so that this show is actually kind of a collaboration between the two artists. Lukacs uses the Polaroids as sketches, photographing his models in scenes with props and lighting to compose images that he then translates into paintings. He’s been producing these photos since the ’80s, but he’s always been known primarily for his large-scale oil paintings.

Jill: Including so many of the Polaroids in the exhibition space and arranging them the way they have lends them a sense of a real-time narrative. I especially like how you are pulled into these boys’ über-masculine environments, and almost their headspace, as the photographs are taking place. Morris talks about the men in the photos being used as actors — Lukacs orders them to pose one way and another for the camera. However, the feeling I get is a narrative that jumps between the fiction Lukacs is creating and the reality of the relationship between model and photographer.

Mandy: The Polaroids usually show just one man, sometimes two, very rarely a group. Nudity and sexually suggestive posturing are prevalent, along with that heightened masculinity you mentioned earlier. But at the same time, Lukacs uses dramatic lighting and richly coloured backdrops, which romanticize the setting. He makes these powerful contemporary male bodies insinuate the classically beautiful.

Jill: There’s so much power in these photographs that I actually found the paintings to fall flat in comparison. And it’s too bad, seeing how the references are so much more full of life and spontaneity than the final product. Lukacs seems to concentrate so intently on creating these huge, impressive scenes with all of this loaded imagery that he completely ignores the basics of what engages a viewer with a work. The handling of the paint, and even most of the basic drawing in these paintings, were not very remarkable.

Mandy: There is one painting in the show, “Green and Yellow,” a very early work from 1989, that I think is the exception to what you’re talking about. There’s far less “all-over” paint handling in this one, which seems much more considered and formally simplistic in a way that makes the completed image feel related to the original Polaroid. I’m not sure about the more recent paintings, either; Lukacs’ work has always been about the time he is in, and the imagery in his current paintings is predominantly military-themed.

Jill: I agree with you on the “Green and Yellow” painting. The imagery is a lot less straightforward here; in the other paintings in the exhibit, Lukacs does tend to hit you over the head with his message. As for the military theme, it’s certainly not my cup of tea, but I think it could definitely be done in a more convincing way. For Lukacs, it seems, the message of the piece is far and away more important than the quality of the imagery itself and whether it holds the viewer’s attention.

Mandy: I wouldn’t go so far as that. Lukacs is still a relatively young artist, one who gained a lot of international attention very early in his career and whose style is still developing. The paintings he’s doing currently may lack the immediate visual edge that his early work had, but he’s experimenting with how to present the narrative. These paintings are transitional, so it’s really not surprising they don’t feel as strong.

Jill: Fair enough. I still think he should concentrate more on capturing the real emotional essence of his Polaroids in his paintings; it might allow more of a connection between subject and viewer.