IRWIN

 

 

Irwin, founded 1983
Dusan Mandic (Ljubljana 1954)
Miran Mohar (Novo Mesto 1958)
Andrej Savski (Ljubljana 1961)
Roman Uranjek (Trbovlje 1961)
Borut Vogelnik (Kranj 1959)
Irwin is also a cofounder of NSK in 1984.

The Program of Irwin Group

The fundamental goal of Irwin is to assert Slovene fine arts by way of representation based on the spectacular.

Governing principles:

-RETRO PRINCIPLE as a regulative blueprint, as a framework of the working procedure (but not as a style) necessary to analyze the historical experience of Slovene fine arts. Hence also the “dictation of the motiff”, varying from one project to another, depending on the purpose of the individual project. Briefly, it is no longer a question of control over a formal procedure encompassing a single idea, but that of perpetual permutation and modification, requiring a new conceptual apparatus to formulate and decode the meaning of individual actions.

-EMPHATIC ECLECTICISM draws on the historical experience, in particular the Slovene fine arts, insiting on permanent permutation of the methods of viewing, reinterpreting and re-creating the past and the contemporary pictorial models.

-ASSERTION OF NATIONALITY AND NATIONAL CULTURE through the dialects of the general and the particular; if modernism and a part of post-modernism stand for the “mainstream”, i.e., for the universal in contemporary art (the image of an artist), then IRWIN is distinguished by a disappearance of the individual artist and by the emergence of a goup, and assertion of those elements of the national fine arts that merged into modernism in a specifically Slovene way and served as a basis on which the nations culture and class affiliation were buildt. Western modernism rests on the code of permanent revolution, utilizing the principles of negation, irony and implicit tragedy, whereas IRWIN goes beyand the historical experience of modernism and dialectically provides it with a a superstructure by asserting the national culture, the triumph of collective spirit and by glorifying those properties of fine arts which distinguish it from Western modernism. IRWIN asserts the continuity of the Slovene past as the only future horizon. Consequintly, art represents a ritual of the past in the assertion of death as a dynamic element within life. The ultimate purpose of IRWIN’s Activities is to reassert Slovene culture in a monumental and spectacular way.

April, 1984

For more details and a Biography: http://www.nskstate.com/irwin/irwin-bio.php

PIOTR UKLANSKI

nato nel 1968 a Varsavia; vive e lavora a Varsavia ( Polonia ) e New York ( USA)

IARA BOUBNOVA

nata nel 1961 a Mosca

Iara Boubnova, curator and art critic, born 1961 in Moscow and graduated from the Moscow State University in 1983. As an independent curator, she has curated over 25 individual and group shows in Bulgaria, where she lives since 1984 and abroad. Her most important projects include: ‘Locally Interested’, Sofia, ‘Station Sofia’ (together with Luchezar Boyadjiev) in ‘Translocation’, Vienna (both 1999); ‘Bulgariaavantgarde. Contending Forces II’, Munich (1998); ‘The Prying Game’ (together with the first-year students of the Centre for Curatorial Studies, Bard College), USA; ‘Menschenbilder. Foto- and Videokunst aus Bulgarien’, Berlin; ‘ARS EX NATIO. Made in BG’, Plovdiv, Bulgaria and ‘Erato’s Version’ (both together with Maria Vassileva) – all in 1997; ‘Bulgarian Glimpse Show’, Moscow (1996); ‘In Search of Self-Reflection’, Plovdiv (1994); ‘Object Bulgarian Style’, Sofia (1993). She curated and organized Bulgarian participation at the: 48 Biennale di Venezia (together with Nedko Solakov, the participating artist in 1999); the 3rd Biennial in Cetinje, Montenegro, Yugoslavia (1997); the 4th St. Petersburg Biennial (1996); the 4th Istanbul Biennial (1995); the 22nd Sao Paulo Biennial (1994) and the Tirana Biennial (2001). She was the co-curator of the ‘Reconstructions’, the 4th Biennial in Cetinje, Montenegro, Yugoslavia and of the ‘Boundless Borders’ Public Project, travelling 2002.

Iara Boubnova is the founding Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art – Sofia. Since 1997, she has been a lecturer at the New Bulgarian University, Visual Arts and Communication Department.

In 1999 she participated in The Getty Summer Institute for Art History and Cultural Studies at Rochester University, USA and in 1997 she was an Arts Link Program visiting lecturer at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, USA. In 1995 and 1994 she had fellowships to study Management of Art Institutions in Vienna and London. Iara Boubnova was a Getty Foundation’s Grant Program Fellow for 1995

Since 1985 she has been a registrar-curator for East-European Art and, since 1997, Chair of the Museum Board at the National Gallery for Foreign Art in Sofia. Iara Boubnova has more then 200 publications on contemporary art in Bulgarian and foreign periodicals as well as in international catalogues

MAJA BAJEVIC

nata il 30/04/1967