Gottfried Helnwein | PRASA | Polska prasa | GOTTFRIED HELNWEINI Walk Alone

Gottfried Helnwein’s exhibition I Walk Alone is pretty unnerving, and that is his point. Large-scale photo-realistic paintings confront the viewer like a series of film stills forming a bizarre and disturbing sequence of nightmares. Using digital photography and computer-generated images combined with classical painting techniques, many of the images are only black and white, while others use one additional color, such as red, to dramatic and horrifying effect.
The images might be seen as bits of individual stories, or pieced together in a variety of frightful ways, or seen as a generalized narrative of brutality and terror, in which innocence is perhaps relative. We are all implicated in Helnwein’s unfolding dramas.


		01. marzec 2008 Artweek Debra Koppman GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN "I Walk Alone", Gottfried Helnwein, one man show at Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery, San Jose State University Gottfried Helnwein’s exhibition I Walk Alone is pretty unnerving, and that is his point. Large-scale photo-realistic paintings confront the viewer like a series of film stills forming a bizarre and disturbing sequence of nightmares. Using digital photography and computer-generated images combined with classical painting techniques, many of the images are only black and white, while others use one additional color, such as red, to dramatic and horrifying effect. The images might be seen as bits of individual stories, or pieced together in a variety of frightful ways, or seen as a generalized narrative of brutality and terror, in which innocence is perhaps relative. We are all implicated in Helnwein’s unfolding dramas.


		Each image gives a glimpse of a narrative to which we are not privy. The completion of the story is then left up to the viewer, but there is nothing here to suggest happy endings. Peopled with disfigured characters, wounded and bloodied heads, children left alone in awful scenarios, the images speak essentially of unspeakable violence. Splitting his time between Los Angeles and Ireland, Helnwein was born in postwar Austria, and marked by the horrors of the Nazi regime. His work is not only a commentary on politically motivated atrocities, but on the complicity of onlookers and the dubious luxury of looking away.


		Since the images both emerge from and reference photographs, they play with perceived reality, even while appearing as staged scenes. Connecting to theater in this way, the images then seem to be stand-ins for horrific occurrences, rather than photographically documented accounts. Storytelling of the most gruesome sort is evoked, using conventions of both theater and photography.


		A small girl, wearing a white nightgown, stands near a bed covered in a white sheet. A small plastic doll lies on the bed, presumably tossed aside. The only color besides the photographic black and white is the red dripping down from her wrapped head and her wounded shoulder. Another small girl, blindfolded and dressed in a sleeveless white T-shirt and a white billowy skirt swirls about a blurry, darkened room, filled with a field of fallen figures. A semicircle of formally suited, male figures stand around a small table. The men’s faces are all distorted composites, many seeming to have some resemblance to Hitler. A small girl, sleeping perhaps, or dead, lies hanging off the edge of the table.


		The images might be seen as bits of individual stories, or pieced together in a variety of frightful ways, or seen as a generalized narrative of brutality and terror, in which innocence is perhaps relative. We are all implicated in Helnwein’s unfolding dramas.


		Gottfried Helnwein: I Walk Alone will be on view through April 4 at Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery, San Jose State University, One Washington Square, San Jose.


		Each month, Artweek Previews Editor Debra Koppman highlights selected exhibitions from venues listed in the Artweek Exhibition Calendar. www.artweek.com