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Gottfried Helnwein's Epiphany (Adoration of the Magi) is a strange takeoff on a traditional New Testament theme in art. The work depicts a Madonnalike mother displaying her baby to attentive Nazi officers, Painted in hyperrealist grisaille with chiaroscuro effects, the work resembles an old documentary photograph made huge. The eerie, sinister overtones are unmistakable. Who is this mother? What do these officers want with her and her child? What kind of official paper might the officer on the left hold in his hand and what might be its result? Helnwein, characteristically, presents us with an ambiguous, haunting image and leaves us to wonder about its meaning...
With its huge size, hyperrealist style, and disturbing content, this unsettling work bestows a psychological anxiety accompanied by a strong magnetic pull. Confronting it, we tend to stare-entranced by both its beauty and its seductive, malevolent overtones... ...

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Galeries nationales du Grand Palais Paris - 16 septembre 2006 - 15 janvier 2007
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts - March 8, 2007 - June 24, 2007 ...

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21c Museum is North America's first museum dedicated solely to collecting and exhibiting contemporary art of the 21st century and will host a series of guest curators. The 21c collection features both emerging artists and acclaimed international artists, such as video artists Bill Viola and Tony Oursler, photographers, Andres Serrano, Sam Taylor Wood, and David Leventhal, sculptors Yinka Shonibare and Judy Fox, and multimedia artists Chuck Close, Gottfried Helnwein, Red Grooms and Kara Walker. ...

The Lentos Museum of Modern Art in Linz organizes the first museum show of Gottfried Helnwein in Austria since he left the land of his birth in the mid-1980s. Helnwein was born in Vienna in 1948. After spending years in Germany, Helnwein now lives in Los Angeles and Ireland.
An extensive body of work is presented in the large exhibition hall of the museum. In Austria Helnwein is still remembered as a "provocateur" and "shock artist", as which he established himself a quarter of a century ago. In light of the substantial further development of his work in conjunction with new image treatments and the use of new media (digital photography, video), it is time for a comprehensive view of this oeuvre today. This is interesting, not least of all, in the context of a boom in new figurative painting and in light of the largely predominant references to media images and popular culture in more recent painting. An updated view of Helnwein's subject matter and his mode of production reveals an artist devoted primarily to moral, emancipatory motifs, whose place within so-called "political" art is only now recognizable to its full extent. ...

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Helnwein
Installation
and one man show
Mackey Gallery
Houston, Texas ...