“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, January 2010
Mercedes Helnwein was born in Vienna, Austria, daughter to renowned painter and art provocateur Gottfried Helnwein. With a deep fascination developing early on in her childhood for both the visual arts as well as literature, she began to dedicate her time equally among the two.
She moved to Ireland with her family, where she spent her teens drawing, writing and listening to the blues in a castle. Her influences, which range from Southern Gothic traditions to the cartoons of Robert Crumb, to nineteenth Century Russian literature, American motel culture and the Delta blues, eventually landed her in a style distinctly her own – unsettling, direct and quietly humorous.
In 2003 she added Los Angeles as a second home. Teaming up with friend and photographer Alex Prager, Mercedes Helnwein began exhibiting her art regularly around L.A. in unorthodox one-night shows. Initially a lot of people came to these shows for the free beer, but her intricately executed drawings of weird goings-on soon began to attract a strong following, making her a vital representative of the L.A. art scene.
In 2008 Simon and Schuster published her first novel “The Potential Hazards of Hester Day”.
Film became an important element in her work in 2008, when she made a three-minute film to accompany her exhibition “Whistling Past the Graveyard” at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery in Los Angeles. Since then she has accompanied all her exhibitions with a short-film, for which her brother Ali Helnwein composes the music. She has also started shooting films for fashion, amongst them Ai for Ai and recently a film for Orla Kiely’s A/W 2011 collection.
Mercedes Helnwein currently lives and works in downtown Los Angeles and Ireland.