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 Vienna, Austria, daughter to Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein.
She moved to Ireland with her family in her teens where she spent her time writing and drawing. Consciously choosing not to attend art schools, Helnwein developed a distinct visual style that remained fully untouched by outside opinions, peers or fads. Instead, she drew her inspiration from personal influences ranging from Southern Gothic traditions to the cartoons of Robert Crumb, nineteenth Century Russian literature, American motel culture and the Delta blues, amongst others.
In 2000, Helnwein moved to Los Angeles and began to exhibit her drawings publicly. Her early art shows were self-instigated, unorthodox one-night events in Los Angeles often with one or two other inexperienced young artists. Sponsored by various alcoholic beverage companies, magazines and unlikely supporters such as Land Rover, these shows generated a surprisingly genuine response and enabled Helnwein to continue developing her style and inteerests. Between 2008 and 2013 Helnwein exhibited regularly at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery, Los Angeles.
With her series Asleep in the Wind, Helnwein 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. From there she began to delve deeper into a wide range of expanding themes: living room dramas, American adolescence, and the "almost normal" activities of everyday lives—with the emphasis always heavy on the female aspect of the story. Populated by prom queens, bridesmaids, witches, nurses and girl gangs Helnwein gives her female protagonists the freedom to be both the heroine and the antiheroine, often letting the lines blur inexorably.
Film and photography has always been an integral part of Helnwein's work, whether behind the scenes as reference material, or in the forefront with films for her exhibitions—as, for example, with the Cops and Nurses films in 2013. Her brother, composer Ali Helnwein often collaborates with her on these projects.
In 2021 her novel SLINGSHOT was published by Wednesday Books/ St. Martin’s Press.
Mercedes Helnwein currently lives and works in downtown Los Angeles and Ireland