Mundos invertidos unfolds as a journey through a reality in which the familiar has lost its innocence. Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, manga heroines, wounded children, weapons and uniformed figures inhabit compositions that appear recognisable but operate according to disturbing new rules.

Rather than presenting Helnwein’s career as a straightforward chronology, the exhibition constructs a succession of confrontations: childhood versus violence, beauty versus horror, fantasy versus historical memory and technical perfection versus moral unease.

The exhibition extends beyond a conventional solo retrospective. Helnwein’s works appear alongside pieces selected from Colección SOLO, creating connections with more than 30 artists and introducing sculpture, drawing and AI-generated moving image into the experience.

Helnwein appropriates figures such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck because they seem universal, accessible and harmless. Once displaced into sinister environments or brought into contact with violence and political power, these childhood icons become symbols of manipulation, conformity and corrupted innocence.

he influence of Goya’s Disasters of War can be felt in Helnwein’s fusion of beauty, violence and human cruelty. His own disaster scenes combine real-world destruction with manga-like characters and the visual intensity of action cinema or video games.

This tension raises an uncomfortable question: have contemporary images taught us to consume catastrophe as entertainment?

Gottfried Helnwein was born in Vienna in 1948 and later acquired Irish nationality. Since the late 1960s, he has worked across painting, drawing, photography, performance and stage design.

He is internationally recognised for monumental hyperrealist images in which technical beauty becomes a vehicle for confronting subjects many viewers would prefer to avoid: abused or wounded children, fascism, war, social violence and the darker psychological effects of mass culture.

His work frequently borrows imagery from advertising, comics, cinema and historical painting. That accessibility is deliberate: Helnwein first gives viewers something they recognise and then destabilises its meaning.

Helnwein’s work feels especially relevant in an age of AI-generated imagery, manipulated photographs and endless visual exposure to war. His almost impossibly polished surfaces make us question whether an image is real, constructed or somewhere between the two.