I WAS A CHILD

ONE MAN SHOW FRIEDMAN BENDA NEW YORK

September 16th – October 23rd, 2010

...his startling body of work: macabre paintings with photographic resonance played out on a grand scale and often in public settings. Throughout his career, Helnwein has glided easily between watercolor, oil and installation work, but his big subject has always been childhood, and not the happy sort. With titles like ‘The Murmur of the Innocents’ and ‘God of Sub-Humans,’ these works — executed with obsessive, old-master-worthy technique — can be as bludgeoning as, say, a Rammstein riff, but you can’t take your eyes off them.

New York Times

Helnwein creates hallucinatory images of reverie, and it is with powerful gestures of light and shadow that he seduces the viewer even as he depicts the aftermath of violence, brutality and suffering. His paintings often depict children as victims of unexplained violence, representing them as archetypal characters in a theatre of cruelty perpetrated by unseen forces. Equally mesmerizing are the artist’s personifications of Mickey Mouse and anime figures, casting them in his on-going exploration of psychological and sociological anxiety and society’s darkest impulses.

Helnwein’s work is visually reminiscent of both old master painting and contemporary cinematography. His use of lighting and mis-en-scene often creates an atmosphere of angst or acquiesence. It is the artist’s painterly treatment of unspeakable acts that affords the viewer just enough comfort to contemplate the horrors that he depicts and it is his masterful handling of his painted images that re-inforces the quiet, intrinsic beauty of his subjects.

FRIEDMAN BENDA

515 W 26th Street

New York, NY 10001

United States

212-239-8700

gallery@friedmanbenda.com