The film tells the story of famed Austrian painter Gottfried Helnwein, obsessed with a mission to use his art to preserve the memory of Holocaust persecutions. ...

Like Sylvia Plath, artist Gottfried Helnwein has a near-schizoid attitude toward Germany's National Socialists, producing images of that period ranging from the truly horrible to those bordering on an eerie reverence. Here his work Epiphany I, Adoration of the Magi (1996), in which the central female figure has a Plath-like intensity. ...

...and especially by opening up the discussion to a powerfully engagé photo-realist like Helnwein, 'image and Enigma' proposes further possibilities and more intricate relationships, demonstrating that the energy of the enigmatic image has suffused yet more widely through current artistic practice.
from the unsettled unsettling times we live in, could we expect anything less? And could anything less than a lucid, concentrated collection of such work make the point as urgent as our times require? ...

Los Angeles - Der österreichische Multimedia-Künstler Gottfried Helnwein präsentierte anlässlich des 65. Jahrestages der von den Nazis "Reichskristallnacht" genannten Novemberpogrome im "Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance" in Los Angeles eine Ausstellung, in der auf das historische Leiden und den unmenschlichen Hass hingewiesen werden soll. Präsentiert wurde auch sein neues Buch "Ninth November Night". Ein Dokumentarfilm zeigte die langjährige Auseinandersetzung des Malers mit dem Thema Faschismus. ...

Helnwein’s 20-by-60 foot outdoor installation “Modern Sleep 2003”, as well as photographs from his collaboration with Marilyn Manson, are included in the show, which opens with this evening’s gala and is open to the general public Friday through Sunday at Santa Monica Airport’s Barker Hangar.
“Modern Sleep 2003” (digital print) is the latest in a series dating back to the 1980s and reflects Helnwein’s use of children in questioning the human condition. It includes two images of a girl. In one, her skin is pale white, and she is dressed in black. In the other, she is black, dressed in white. In both images, her expression is death-like.
“They have open eyes, so modern sleep doesn’t mean they are just sleeping,” says Helnwein. “It might mean something else.” ...

“This is a very serious and somewhat disturbing exhibition,” said Mayor Meralee Goldman, who is supportive of the exhibit and was first approached by the Austrian artist.
“There is an important component of education to go along with this exhibit,” Human Relations Director Mary O’Gorman said. “This is a Holocaust Memorial, and the intent at times is to overwhelm.”
The exhibit is described as “an art event to focus the conscience of the viewer and, through media exposure, the conscience of the widest possible public” by the artist’s draft proposal. “An art installation a city block long...will rise into public view to cry out against not only one of history’s most tragic and horrific episodes of prejudice, but also against the current resurgence of the endangerment of children through intolerance around the world.” ...

Workmen finish one of a series of prints measuring 9.3 metres by 6.2 metres by Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein.The prints of Kilkenny children will hang on buildings in Kilkenny as parts of its arts festival beginning on August 10th. ...

Any artist who sites Donald Duck and Jesus Christ as the most important influences in their art must be worth taking a look at.
In the row of pristine gallery fronts in London's Cork street, you cannot miss Gottfried Helnwein's show; it's the one with the gigantic Mickey Mouse staring out at you.
The Robert Sandelson Gallery has given us a stunning show of the infamous, Austrian born artist's recent work. Helnwein is on a mission to find the answers to questions that no-one in Austria would give him; such as why the post-war republic portrayed itself as a victim rather than as one of the first main perpetrators of Nazism. ...

Austrian artist Gottfired Helnwein's powerful and haunting paintings provide a disturbing commentary on Nazism and the Holocaust, regularly provoking outraged reactions from right-wingers in his native land and in Germany. "I was amazed how much pictures could reach into the hearts and minds of people - and how much they would talk to me about it," he told the JC. "For me, art is like a dialogue. My art is not giving answers, it is asking questions." ...

A year or so back, an exhibition called Sensations caused a few upsets, first in London and then in New York. Central to the reaction was a large-scale portrait of a child-killer assembled from, if I remember correctly, the palm prints of children. So far, so bland. The shock element in art has been much talked about in the last five years but art that actually shocks has been thin on the ground during the same period.
Step forward then, Gottfried Helnwein.
By and large, if art is going to shock, it better have something shocking to say,and it's clear that Helnwein has found that. ...