After moving to New York in 2009, Eric Helvie began working as painting assistant to a renowned contemporary artist. Helvie quickly became an integral part of the studio, producing photorealistic paintings for the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Gagosian Gallery, Sadie Coles Gallery, Massimo De Carlo Gallery, Paula Cooper Gallery and Palazzo Grassi in Venice.
During his 6 year assistantship, Helvie maintained his own studio practice. In 2009 he was given his first New York solo exhibition at the home of art collectors, Maxine and Andrew Koven. In 2012 he was included in a group exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery and in 2015, Helvie mounted two consecutive solo shows at Natalie Kates Projects and Rivington Design House, respectively. Towards the end of 2015, he began his own full time studio practice in order to produce work for his upcoming Chelsea show, scheduled for the spring of 2016.
Helvie's work deals directly with the act of seeing, obsessive looking, and optical ambiguity. Pulling from art history, television and film, his paintings act as props and icons: objects that glean meaning from their context and point to a larger system of understanding.
