catalogue
essay by Wolfgang Bauer ...

Historian Peter Selz has compared Gottfried Helnwein's tortured, screaming, and bandaged self-portraits to Messerschmidt's sculptural self-portraits,
but the artist has said, " The reason why I took up the subject of self-portraits and why I have put myself on stage was to function as a kind of representative.
There is nothing autobiographical, no therapy, and it says nothing about me personally.
.... I am always available as a model." ...

Helnweins Thema ist der malträtierte, unterdrückte Mensch, am beeindruckendsten in einer Serie von mißhandelten und verstümmelten Kinderköpfen (1969). Dieses Thema inszeniert er auch in Fotoserien und Installationen sowie Performances ("Blut für Helnwein", 1972). Nach 1985 kombiniert er großformatige Fotos mit abstrakt-gestischer Malerei ("Der Beweis", 1986). In Helnweins Kunstauffassung offenbart sich ein obsessiver Realismus, der die verdrängte, tabuisierte »Nachtseite« der menschlichen Zivilisation in packenden Metaphern veranschaulicht. ...

Gottfried Helnwein, "Mickey", oil and acrylic on canvas,210cm x 310cm ...

catalogue ...

Die Ausstellung präsentiert vierzig ausgewählte Statements großer Photographen des 20.Jahrhunderts:
von Cartier-Bresson, Lebeck, Chargesheimer bis zu Klauke und Helnwein wird jeweils eine bedeutende künstlerische Position gezeigt.
Die Ausstellung konzentriert sich nicht auf das Einzelbild, sondern komponiert ganze Werkgruppen zu großformatigen Tableaus und unterstreicht so den "journalistischen Aspekt" in der Photographie dieses Jahrhunderts.
Einen Abschluß findet dieser Jahrhundertrückblick in drei künstlerischen Positionen, die in sehr persönlicher Weise Stellung zur gesellschaftlichen Situation beziehen:
Jürgen Klaukes "Self Performance" (1972/73), Philip Pococks Berliner Szenen (1982)
sowie Gottfried Helnweins "Poems" (1998). ...

Fall of the Angels.
It's a slow fall. Its actually a fall in extreme slow motion. Its so slow that the motion seems frozen, like a glacier that's constantly flowing and moving, though not perceptible to our eyes, because for us, who live short and fast, glaciers appear to be static and eternal.
That former angel seems to be suspended between hell and heaven, It has not hit the bottom yet - and it probably never will - but it's getting closer ....constantly.

Gottfried Helnwein

...

Exhibition - catalogue
One man show, Butler House, Kilkenny
Installation in the Kilkenny city center
Introduction by Claire O'Donoghue
Essay by Mic Moroney

Ninety children from around the city and country were photographed by the artist here in the High Street and nine are displayed in central locations around the city, dramatically enlarged up to 9 metres high. This ongoing project, begun here, will continue in other cities and towns in Ireland as the artist intends to expand the work to include one thousand Irish children. These beautiful,confident and happy children from Kilkenny contrast starkly with some of his more disturbing imagery. The juxtaposition of historical photographs of the Nazi regime with religious imagery of the Madonna and Child in the "Epiphany" series can make uneasy viewing not only in Germany and Austria but also here in Kilkenny.
Amongst a number of possible readings of these works is the uncomfortable relationship between the church and oppression in its various forms. However, as the artist Nolde said, "harmless pictures seldom mean anything". Nolde was banned from painting by the Nazi regime. ...

...

exhibition-catalogue
Albertina, Wien - 10. 10. 2000 - 18. 10. 2000
Galerie Suppan, Wien - 23.10. - 25.11. 2000
Museum für Bildende Kunst, Budapest - 25.1. bis 7.3.2001 ...

The Book Bukowski in Pictures is the first pictorial biography of cult writer, Charles Bukowski. The writer's extraordinary private and public life is illustrated with hundreds of photographs, most published for the first time. Extracts from Bukowski's poetry and prose are sprinkled throughout, together with drawings, cartoons, manuscripts, rare broadsides and personal letters. It features powerful new portraits of Bukowski by leading photographers such as Gottfried Helnwein and Tony Lane, former art director of Rolling Stone, as well as work by R.Crumb. All photographs have detailed captions by biographer Howard Sounes who has also written a powerful introductory text with new revelations gleaned from Bukowski's recently declassified FBI file. The end result is a fascinating life in pictures that will be essential for all Bukowski fans. ...

February 1999 - on tour till 2001
started at the Ansel Adams Center for Photography,
San Francisco
catalogue: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. New York,
ISBN 0-8109-4358-1 ...

... Among others, Joel-Peter Witkin's repugnant, prosthetic-clad Dominatrice, from 1988, is here, as is Gottfried Helnwein's barbaric 1987 Self-Portrait, depicting his own torture with surgical tools. By exploring the simpler technique ...
(An American Century of Photography: From Dry-plate to Digital, Print, book review
by Fred Ritchin)
608 pages; 499 b&w and color illustrations;
Introductions by Barbara Hitchcock and Deborah Klochko Essay by Deborah Martin Kao Friends of Photography/Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York 120 pages; 90 color photographs; ...

...

"In Gottfried Helnweins porträthaftem Fotobild, das auf einem Gemälde basiert, betet ein kleiner Junge zu seinem Gott, und wer intensiv hinschaut, entdeckt plötzlich, dass die Hände des Jungen aus diletantisch gefertigten Protesen bestehen, Wie eine optische Mine ist der Schock im anheimelnden Kitschbild verborgen.
Helnwein ist ein Meister in der Entlarvung von verlogener Bildrethorik."
Gabriele Honnef-Harling
-
Mit mehr als 170 000 Besuchern war die Ausstellung
"Der (im-)perfekte Mensch"
die bestbesuchte Sonderausstellung des Deutschen Hygienemuseums Dresden seit 1990.
Hygiene-Museum, Dresden - 20, 12. 2000 - 12. 8. 2001
Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin - 16. 3. - 2. 6. 2002
Kunsthalle, Villa Kobe, Halle, (Saale) - 28. 2. - 14. 4. 2002 ...

...Noch 1989 erregte ein Plakat Gottfried Helnweins, auf dem mit einem entblößten Unterleib für „Lulu" geworben wurde, die Stadt München... ...

Artists in their pusuit to understand themselves and the world around them have been forced to face the pain of suffering.
Helnwein, in his important "American Madonna" (Epiphany IV) painting, depicts with provocation the conflict between men of power and the weak.
In this present day setting, the police are confronting a divine being. ...

...

Ingo Metzmacher, Jürgen Flimm, Gottfried Helnwein ...

..."Kommunikationsforscher Paul Watzlawick, der Maler Gottfried Helnwein, der Regisseur Billy Wilder, die Meisterphotographin Inge Morath, der Vatikanbibliothekar Kardinal Alfons Maria Stickler" ...