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Sept. 1-Jan. 2, 2001
Over 30 playful but nightmare-inducing works (including a mutilated Rug Rat by Heidi Zumbrum and a monstrous Mickey by Gottfried Helnwein) drawn from the collection of L.A. contemporary art patrons Kent and Vicki Logan. Other artists are David Levinthal, Laurie Simmons, Yoshitomo Nara and Hung Tung-Lu.
Curator: Heather Whitmore Jain, SFMOMA.
Catalogue: 44 pp., with essay by Jain and an interview of the Logans by Janet Bishop, SFMOMA.

Helnwein's 'Mickey' , 1995, oil and acrylic on canvas, 83" x 122" ,
Vicki and Kent Logan Collection,
in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. ...

(excerpt) Other works in the exhibition present the dark side of cartoon characters. The prevailing narrative structure of many cartoons is a cycle of one's character's unrelenting attacks on another. Yet the violence of these scenarios is subverted and humor achieved by the lack of any permanent injury to the victim and the gleeful nonchalance of the adversary even during the most aggressive assault. Static representations of wounded or menacing cartoon characters can expose the violence and eliminate the humorous punch line. In Gottfried Helnwein's painting Mickey (plate 24), Mickey Mouse's physical features, which usually contribute to his appeal become a thin veneer of looming attack. Blown up to a monster scale and rendered in an austere gray palette, Mickey's smile is deceptive. ...

Catalogue:
Helnwein
Robert Sandelson Gallery. London
Text by Robert Flynn Johnson,
Curator in Charge,
Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco ...

catalogue
Antico Monastero
di Santa Chiara

"E’ sicuramente importante dimostrare, per la prima volta nell’Europa Occidentale, la comune fede in un unico Signore risorto"
Mons. Michel Berger ...

group show ...

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." ... ...

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). ...

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Helnwein
In the Dominican church, Krems
Museum of Lower Austria
Catalogue
HELNWEIN APOKALYPSE
Museum of Lower Austria
Text by Peter Zawrel
Chief Curator, Lower Austria County Museum of Art ...

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 ...

group show

The Choice, was an exhibition that identified unknown and emerging artists through the viewpoint of leading contemporary artists. We invited an international group of artists to engage their own curatorial ideas. In the role of curator, these artists had been asked to present the work of artists they have followed or whose work has affected them in a personal way.
Curator/Artists
Ida Applebroog: Jane Higgins, Saeri Kiritani, Lisa Petsu Lagunes
Nicole Eisenman: Alison Kelly, Maria E. Piñeres, Suzanne Wright
Robert Gober: Jonathon Hexner
Antony Gormley: Ignassi Aballi, John Patrick Clayman
Gottfried Helnwein: Iris Andraschek, Danielle Kraay
Damien Hirst: Rachel Howard
Cindy Sherman: Charles Clough, Susan Jennings, David Krueger, Gail Le Boff
Laurie Simmons: Helen Rousakis, Pedro Barbeito
Kiki Smith: Joey Kötting
Sam Taylor-Wood: Georgie Hopton ...

Wäinö Aaltonens museum inleder höstsäsongen med en utställning av arbeten av österrikaren Gottfried Helnwein (f. 1948 i Wien). Här finns stora m†lningar vars tematik borrar sig in i smärtpunkterna i 1900-talets allmänna och personhistoria, här finns fotografier av den moderna kulturens märkesmän från Andy Warhol till Keith Richards samt teckningar, akvareller och arbeten i blandteknik. Helnweins konst har den stora allmänheten lärt känna främst genom hans affischer. Han är också känd från pärmbilder till Life och Time. I sina arbeten behandlar Helnwein religionens och den allmänna moralens inverkan på barnens och minoriteternas ställning samt t.ex. åsterrikes och Tysklands nazistiska förflutna och det aktiva bortglömmandet av den. Både i hans porträtt och i hans psykologiskt träffande studier framträder en ångestfylld värdevärld. ...

"I ask, I do not answer."
- My works are questions, not answers, says the Austrian, Gottfried Helnwein,
time and time again focusing on the most sore points of contemporary, general and private history.
The retrospective exhibition of this controversial artist was opened yesterday in Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art and is open until 22nd of November.
Helnwein says he became an artist because, being born after the war, he had so many questions to ask.
He also stresses that the same questions must be asked again and again.
"I, as probably every artist does, have only one theme which I incessantly vary. The use of diverse techniques is but a means of getting closer to one's original goals." ...

The child has grown into a world famous artist. But he has carried his questions with him. Today opens a large retrospective exhibition of Helnwein's art in Waino Aaltonen Museum of Art in Turku. The exhibition contains aquarels, oil paintings, drawings and photographs. They have often caused controversies by dealing with subjects that are all too sensitive. ...

"Child's Head", 1991, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 650x403.5
Pg. 278
The early stages of this monumental head can be seen in Helnwein's widely varied portrayals from the seventies of suffering children, but above all in the Cologne installation of anonymous children's portraits "9th November Night" from 1988.
The human face, in particular the child's face, is of great fascination for Helnwein and consequently accounts for one of his central pictorial subjects. The monumental face of a little girl which is introduced here is, as it were, representative of all children. In our adult society oriented towards profit and success, children can almost be described as a fringe group, their interests indeed being observed in a comparatively modest fashion. Against this background, this monumentalizing of the face in connection with the hyperrealistic style of painting is to be understood as an oppressive irritation of our customary experience of perception.
Originally the child's head was shown in a Minorite church in Krems, Stein; in fact it was placed at the focal point of a huge early Gothic room which lent the picture a positively sacral tone. ...

"Gods, Heroes and Idols"

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