Mercedes Helnwein

Biography

“A writer as well as visual artist, Mercedes Helnwein does not so much tell stories or even capture moments in her drawings as she triggers possibilities – the possibilities being vaguely unlikely, vaguely unsavory, and not-so-vaguely menacing, rather like inverse Magrittes. Helnwein’s basic ingredient is the fully, fashionably, clothed human figure, more often than not regarding the viewer or about to; occupying a peculiarly lit, but familiar space, they are shown engaged in a solipsistic soliloquy – self-absorbed and drenched in an almost urgent ennui – with someone and/or something else. The something else is never a weapon, and the someone else never seems to be a love interest or BFF, so the narrative tension keeps to a simmer. But that tension is the more pervasive for its very indirection and indefinability…”
(Peter Frank for Art Ltd.)

Mercedes Helnwein was born in 1979 in Vienna, daughter to Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein.
She moved to Ireland with her family in her teens. As an artist she is self taught. She made a conscious decision not to attend art school and instead drew inspiration from personal influences ranging from Southern Gothic traditions to the cartoons of Robert Crumb, from 19th century literature to American Motel Culture and the Delta Blues.

In 2000, Mercedes Helnwein moved to Los Angeles and began to exhibit her drawings publicly. Her early art shows were self-instigated, one-night events often with one or two other emerging artists. Between 2008 and 2013 she exhibited regularly at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery, Los Angeles. In 2010, Damien Hirst bought all the works in her exhibition “Whistling Past the Graveyard” at the A Gallery in London. Mercedes Helnwein is described in the media as a “shooting star” and “someone to watch”.

With her series Asleep in the Wind (2011) she broke from the primarily pencil-focused style of her early work and moved onto large-scale formats, eventually adopting oil pastel as her dominant medium. Her work has spanned various themes over the years, but it is united in its exploration of the normalcy of every-day life through a filter of dubiety. Mercedes Helnwein has said: “I love mundane moments because I don’t believe that anything is ever normal. When I play with a scene, the idea is to let myself see the undercurrents of the rat’s nest that’s propping up the familiar.”

Although men have played a crucial part in many of her works, the emphasis is always heavy on the female aspect of the story. Populated by prom queens, bridesmaids, witches, nurses and girl gangs Mercedes Helnwein gives the female protagonists in her paintings the freedom to be both the heroine and the antiheroine, often letting the lines blur inexorably.
In 2021 her novel SLINGSHOT was published by Wednesday Books/St. Martin’s Press.
Mercedes Helnwein currently lives and works in downtown Los Angeles.