1996 Helnwein works on the photo-series "Poems".
a series of photographic pictures of people who have died a violent death
He photographs the photographs of dead people and again and again photographs the photographs of the photographs ultimately to the point of dissolution. ...

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, photography selected from the museum collection. group show.

Set and costumes for "Pasolini" at the Schauspielhaus theatre in Hamburg;.
directed by Hans Kresnik. ...

One-man show in the Fine Arts Museum, Otaru, Japan. Installation "Neunter November Nacht".
...

Installation of a picture of a monochromic blue face of 25x16 metres (75x50 feet) in Vienna on a building in the city centre.

"It's only Rock and Roll", Phoenix Museum of Art, Arizona.
Rock and Roll Currents in Contemporary Art
Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio
Lakeview Museum of Arts and Science, Peoria, Illinois
Nexus Contemporary Arts Center, Atlanta, Georgia
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Cleveland

"Faces" one-man show, Houston Centre for Photography..
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1994 "Faces" one-man show in the Centre International Contemporain d'Art in Montreal..

Helnwein works on the "Fire"- series.
a series of dark monochrome paintings with the faces of Arthur Rimbaud, Jim Morrison, Malcolm X, Mishima, Mayakovski, Rosa Luxemburg, Ulrike Meinhof and others.

One-man show in the Städtisches Museum, Schleswig.

"Das Jahrzehnt der Malerei" (The Decade of Painting).
Austrian Artists of the Schömer Collection, Vienna
in the Kunstverein, Augsburg, Germany.

Helnwein works intensively on the development of new artistic techniques.
He creates new mixed-media techniques by developing, changing, altering and combining various images on the computer and painting them finally with different media on canvas, (usally: oil, acrylic and ink-jet)

1993 One-man show "Faces" at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn.
...

"Faces", one-man show in the Munich Stadtmuseum.

"Aktion-Reaktion" (Action-Reaction) exhibition of the Austrian painters Rainer, Nitsch, Brus, and Helnwein, works from the Schömer collection, at the Foundation Fiecht, Austria.

In the Ludwig Forum in Aachen the "48 Portraits" are shown in the "Künstlerportraits" exhibition.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art shows Helnwein's self-portait "Black Mirror".
...

One-man show at the Pfalzgalerie Museum in Kaiserslautern and at the Kunstmuseum in Thun.

1991 Installation "Kindskopf" (Child's Head) in the Minoriten Church in Krems, Niederösterreichisches Landesmuseum (Museum of Lower Austria).
Helnwein paints a 6x4 m (18x12 feet) child's head for the apse of the early Gothic basilica. Ten days before the opening he has his children Amadeus, Ali Elvis and Mercedes paint large-format canvases which he then arranges in the basilica ...

Works on the "48 Portraits".
a series of 48 monochrome red paintings of women (oil on canvas) as a counterpart to Gerhard Richter's "48 Portraits" of 1971, which depict only men in monochrome grey.
The cycle of paintings is first shown in the Galerie Koppelmann in Cologne, and later aquired by collector Peter Ludwig for the Ludwig Museum in Aachen.