Attila Richard Lukacs | Pony Boi
Benjamin Lumb Art House 114 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, British Columbia V6B 1G8
Attila Richard Lukacs, “Pony Boi 37,” 2023
oil, egg tempera and enamal on canvas, 99 × 69 × 2 in (courtesy of the gallery)
Attila Richard Lukacs’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.