1988 Large installation in the city center of Cologne, between the Ludwig Museum and the Cologne Cathedral: "Neunter November Nacht" (Ninth November Night).
A four-meter-high, hundred-meter-long picture lane in which Helnwein recalls the "Reichskristallnacht", the beginning of the Holocaust, on 9 November 1938. He confronts the passersby with larger-than-life children's faces lined up in a seemingly endless row, as if for concentration camp selection. Just days into the exhibit, these portraits were vandalized by unknown persons, symbolically cutting the throats of the depicted children's faces.
Since then large scale installations in public spaces became an important part of his work ...

Set, costumes, and make-up for "Macbeth", a production of Hans Kresnik's choreographic theatre in the Stadttheater in Heidelberg.
The play is given an enthusiastic reception by audience and critics and is later awarded the Theatre Prize of Berlin ...

Participates in the exhibition "Selection 4" Polaroid Art of the last 10 years in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and in the "photokina" in Cologne.

Helnwein works simultaneously on a series of large-format, monochromatic-blue, realistic oil and acrylic paintings, as well as on a series of monochrome abstract paintings..

1987 "Helnwein - Der Untermensch", self-portraits from 1970 - 1987, one-man show at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Strasbourg.
Roland Recht, Chief Curator of Museums in Strasbourg, stated: "The Viennese Helnwein is part of a tradition going back to the 18th century, to which Messerschmidt's grimacing sculptures also belong, on which one of Freud's pupils wrote a long treatise.
One sees, too, the common ground of these works with those of Arnulf Rainer or Nitsch, two other Viennese, who display their own bodies in the frame of reference of injury, pain, and death. One can also see this fascination for body language goes back to the expressive gesture in the work of Egon Schiele." ...

Installation and performance (Exhibition-Opera) "Der Untermensch" in the Kunsthalle Bremen.
...

Aktion "Gott der Untermenschen".
Performance at camp Kopal of the Austrian army, February, 1987. Helnwein uses tanks and real ammunition ...

Helnwein meets with Simon Wesenthal and discusses his art-project "Ninth November Night" with him..
Helnwein plans an Installation in rememberence of "Kristallnacht" 50 years ago, in the city center of Cologne - between the Ludwig Museum and the Cathedral. ...

Parallel to the large-format, multi-part paintings and the photographic work, Helnwein now also turns to crayon drawings.
"Knabe und Neger" (Boy and Negro),
"Triumph der Wissenschaft" (Triumph of Science),
"Nachgeburt der Venus" (The Afterbirth of Venus),
"Das Lügengebet" (The Prayer of Lies).

One-man show in the Mittelrhein Museum, Koblenz, and in the Freie Volksbühne theatre in Berlin.
Podium discussion "Violence, Sexuality, Antiquity" with Heiner Müller, Hans Neuenfels, Ernest Bornemann and Gottfried Helnwein.

1986 He works on a series of large-format self-portrait metamorphoses, which have their origin in the self-portrait as screaming man blinded by forks.
Start of a series of photographic self-dramatisations using the themes of dying hero, SS man, martyr, sufferer, friend of children, and mummified corpse.
"Gott der Untermenschen" (God of Sub-Humans),
"Das stille Leuchten der Avantgarde" (The Silent Glow of the Avant-Garde),
"Bete Herr, denn wir sind nah!" (Pray, Lord, for We Are Near!),
"Eine Träne auf Reisen" (A Tear on a Journey),
"Der Tod des Expertentums" (The Death of Expertise),
"Partisanenliebe" (Partisan Love),
"Blitzkrieg der Liebe" (Blitzkrieg of Love),
"Geheime Elite" [Secret Elite],
"Gefäss der Leidenschaft" (Vessel of Passion).

1985 One-man show at the Albertina museum, Vienna.
Catalogue with texts by Walter Koschatzky and Peter Gorsen ...

In Germany, he radically changes his way of working and now begins a series of large-format paintings consisting of several parts (diptychs, triptychs, poliptychs).
In doing so he combines photo-murals with abstract gestural and monochrome painting in oil and acrylic, also using reproductions of Caspar David Friedrich paintings and war documentary photographs. He assembles these to form what the critic Peter Gorsen calls "Bilderstrassen" (picture lanes). In doing this, Helnwein closely examines taboo subject matters and tackles terms such as "Untermensch" (sub-human), "entartete Kunst" (degenerate art), "lebensunwertes Leben" (life unworthy of life). ...

Rudolf Hausner, recommends Helnwein as his successor as professor of the master-class for painting at the University of Visual Art in Vienna.
Helnwein declines, leaves Vienna and moves with his family to Germany ...

"Time" magazine commissions Robert Rauschenberg and Gottfried Helnwein to design covers with Deng Xiaoping.

1984 "Helnwein", the film by Peter Hajek, opens the Austrian Week in the Berlin film festival, "Berlinale".
The film is awarded the Adolf Grimme Prize and in the same year wins the Eduard Rhein Prize and the Golden Kader of the city of Vienna for outstanding camera work.

A self-portrait collage as a contribution to the "1984 - Orwell and the Present Day" exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna.

His self-portrait is shown in the exhibition "Köpfe und Gesichter" (Heads and Faces) in the Darmstadt Kunsthalle.

Helnwein's self-portrait is on the cover of the Italian news magazine "L'Espresso".

The office of Soviet foreign minister Gromyko tries to acquire Helnwein's portrait of Gromyko, which appeared as a "Time" cover.
But the painting is already part of a collection in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.