SOLO Independencia is transformed this year to host the first large-scale exhibition in Spain by Gottfried Helnwein (Vienna, Austria, 1948). Internationally renowned for his hyperrealistic images, Helnwein addresses the betrayal of childhood innocence, the horrors of fascism and the convergence of popular culture and violence.
HELNWEIN: mundos invertidos features many of the artist’s most iconic creations, shown together with a selection of works from SOLO. The exhibition has been made possible with the collaboration of over a dozen different collections and includes significant pieces loaned by the artist himself, as well as recently produced sculptures and oil paintings.
In Helnwein’s upturned worlds, fiction and reality combine to portray the most disquieting aspects of human nature. Familiar cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck reveal a dark underside, manga-inspired figures populate real-life disaster scenes and nightmarish visions take physical form. Helnwein’s images of wounded or bandaged children show the outcomes of conflict, while the machinery of power is depicted in paintings featuring weapons or uniformed elites.
Carefully chosen works from SOLO, by over 30 different artists, also form part of this major exhibition. These include sculptures by Keiichi Tanaami and Magda Kirk and Kayoko Mizumoto, drawings by El Roto, Raymond Pettibon and Juan Barjola, and recent AI video creations by Ulyss3s.
HELNWEIN: mundos invertidos invites new readings of the guest artist’s extraordinary — and searingly relevant — visual universe, which unfolds room by room across SOLO Independencia.
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The exhibition will be on view from March 25 to December 30.
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More information coming soon.