BLAH Launches Attila Richard Lukacs ‘Pony Boi’ Exhibition

Benjamin Lumb with artist Attila Richard Lukacs
 

By WESLEY YUEN October 8, 2023 

From the press release:

Benjamin Lumb Art House is an art gallery working with emerging and established artists with a focus on photography, installation and paintings. Out-of-the-ordinary spaces have included a storefront, an old warehouse, rotating pop-up locations across the Lower Mainland, and now the space at 114 West Hastings. As a well-established and practicing artist in his own right Lumb inherently understands the work of the artists he represents and exhibits and is able to curate and support the narrative, that they seek to communicate.

Pony Boi, Attila Richard Lukac‘s most recent body of work, delves into memories of his time in New York City between 1999 and 2001. Originally, Pony Boi was conceived as a zine he created together with associate editor Hugo Rempel. It included various artistic contributions from artists such as Tim Gardener, Charles Henri Ford, Dieter Hall, Graham Gillmore, Rick Castro, Jaroslav Mogutin and many others and was sold at the Gay and S&M Leather Street Fair on West 13th Street in NYC. 

Longing to start his life over, he left the artist – the entity – Attila Richard Lukacs behind and disappeared into being Pony Boi. The narrative of the piece PONY BOI vs DRUM comes from his adventures as Pony Boi back in New York City. Blurring lines between fact and fiction, the work is based around the on-goings of the neighbourhood of his New York studio, the meatpacking district and the naughty and steamy happenings at nighttime.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the meatpacking district was a melting pot of sex-workers, transvestites, meat packers, bikers, police and people coming in and out of the late night sex clubs, S&M leather club The Lure and biker bars. Re-examining the theme of Pony Boi, Attila’s current body of work is an extension of this large-scale piece, PONY BOI vs DRUM and the original zine, resembling magazine covers blending pornography and Kunst. WM

Paul Larocque: President/CEO of Arts Umbrella.

Installation view, Attila Richard Lukacs ‘Pony Boi’ at BLAH.

Artist and curator Lam Wong with Rahmi Emin

(Left to right) Artist Jamie Dolinko, Artist and Curator Susi Milne, Artist Angela Grossmann, Social Entrepreneur Julie Lee

Anton Tabakov, Barbara BF, Atilla studio assistant Barbara Pizzinini, Telus’ Kenn Hamlin  

The artists’ dentist Zenon Trylowsky

BLAH Gallery assistant and architect Jay Alkana

Rahmi Emin, Dr. Curtis Collins, Director & Chief Curator, Audain Art Museum Whistler