Michael Lukas

Untitled 2014

Watercolor pencil and oil on canvas

70.8 x 78.7 in.

Michael Lukas was born in Vienna in 2003, where he now still lives and works. He attended fashion school in Hetzendorf, Vienna in 2003 and worked in the fashion industry in the following two years. In 2006 he began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts where he extended his training to receive a Diploma in Advanced class in 2011. His experience in both fashion and arts gives his works a unique and distinctive quality. 

His exhibition history includes the Michi Lukas Solo-Show (…es lebe der Zentralfriedhof) at the Mühlgasse studio in Vienna, Harderer. Betterer. Fasterer. Strongerer at Brucennial in New York, Walter Koschatzky Kunstpreis at MuMoK in Vienna, *Grr*(eece) & *Hmmm* at the Athens Biennale and Boom&Boom at the Mühlgasse studio in Vienna.

His works span a range of mediums including paint, pencil, print and installation.  His canvases often include a strong element of black and white, focusing on the monochrome and the power of contrast. His paintings sometimes feature injections of colour that emphasise this power of juxtaposition and comparison. The gestural, impulsive brushstrokes are powerful and explosive. Lukas’s innovative use of white paint in his canvases gives his paintings a unique and captivating freshness, lightness and clarity. The directional movement in his pieces often stems from a particular point: alluding to the qualities of inspiration and impulse, expanding and developing from an initial source. The cohesive yet unpredictable results straddle the boundaries of the unstable, finding the perfect equilibrium between volatile and established.