Helnwein meets with Lou Reed in Los Angeles.
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Wim Wenders visits the studio in Los Angeles.
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"Le nazisme dans l'oeuvre d'Anselm Kiefer et Gottfried Helnwein", under this title, Galia Fischer writes a Mémoire de Maîtrise d’Histoire de l'art for the Université Paris I. Panthéon-Sorbonne.
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Exhibition and performance with Manson at the Volksbühne Berlin..
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Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, the Regina Miller Gouger Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University. "Comic Release: Negotiating Identity for a New Generation," group show.

The University of Arizona Museum of Art, "Comic Release: Negotiating Identity for a New Generation".

2002 Helnwein establishes a studio in downtown Los Angeles.
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Helnwein opens his new studio in Los Angeles with a retrospective of his work.
"The Los Angeles Times" writes about this event: "When Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein opened a show of his paintings recently, celebrities crowded his downtown studio. Leonardo DiCaprio rubbed Elbows with Marilyn Manson. Beck chatted with Kevin Smith. Mena Suvari stopped for a photo op, and Sean Penn lent his cool. " ...

Helnwein works on a series of American landscapes, first work "Death Valley I" (Death Valley, California, 120x774 cm).

"Downtown" (The American paintings II), One man show at Modernism Gallery in San Francisco.

Helnwein at the Lead White Gallery in Dublin, "VII" (seven), group show.

Henwein starts collaborating with Marilyn Manson on a several visual art projects.
Beginning of the friendship with Marilyn Manson. ...

Marilyn Manson and painter Gottfried Helnwein have joined forces to collaborate on a series of creations

"In the Blink of an Eye - Photo Art", (Augenblick - Foto Kunst), group show.
Museum Kunst der Gegenwart, Collection Essl, Klosterneuburg/Vienna

Sean Penn visits Helnwein in his L.A, studio and invites him to join in a collaboration on several Film- and video projects. .
Beginning of the friendship with Sean Penn, who said in an interview: "Well, the world is a haunted house, and Helnwein at times is our tour guide through it. A lot of it is the way he's approached life. And it doesn't take someone knowing him to know that. You take one look at the paintings and you say "this guy has been around." You can't sit in a closet - and create this. This level of work is earned."
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Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, „Meisterwerke der Fotografie: Face to Face", Portraitfotografie aus der Sammlung der DG- Bank.

San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, „Portrait Obscured“.

Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber and William S. Farish, American Ambassador to Great Britain, visit Gottfried Helnwein at his studio in Ireland.

Beck stays at Helnwein's castle in Ireland.
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Nicolas Cage visits the studio and acquires several works of Helnwein, amongst them "Red Gun".
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Arnold Schwarzenegger visits Helnwein's studio in Los Angeles.
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