Screening: Geography of Time (40 years)

The exhibition is accompanied by a talk with the artists on February 8, 2024, at 6 PM and a film screening on March 21, 2024, at 6 PM

Gregor Podnar Vienna is pleased to present the sixth solo exhibition of works by the Ljubljana-based Slovenian artist group IRWIN (Dušan Mandič, Miran Mohar, Andrej Savski, Roman Uranjek †, Borut Vogelnik), dedicated to the 40th anniversary of their artistic work.

Since 1983, IRWIN has been working in a wide range of media, from painting to art in public spaces, sculpture and installation to book publishing.. As part of the NSK movement, the group developed the so- called Retro Principle method, which combines motifs and symbols of past totalitarian systems with artistic movements and transforms them visually.

Geography of Time (40 years) showcases a selection of the collective’s work, from its formation in the 1980s to the present day, in an attempt to visualise IRWIN’s comprehensive and characteristic approach to making connections between art and ideology. By juxtaposing historical works with the collective’s current artistic production, the exhibition reflects ideological, social and aesthetic changes as well as constants of the last four decades. Questions of territory, state and imaginary borders are among the artists group’s themes that have recently become topical again in Europe.

Geography of Time (40 years) addresses these subjects while providing an insight into the diverse work of this unique collective. One segment of the exhibition examines the monochrome in IRWIN’s work as one of the starting points of ‘’Western’’ modernism and avant-garde movements, and it serves as a retrospective commentary on art history in general. In another part of the display IRWIN’s reduction of their formal language to five ‘’motifs’’ (cross, little drummer, stag, cup of coffee, sower), which they borrow from Slovenian and European art history, leads to the aim of self-historization, as the collective addresses its own history (of art).

The exhibition is curated by Hana Ostan Ožbolt and Gregor Podnar and is supported by SKICA – Slovenian Cultural Information Center in Vienna.

IRWIN (Dušan Mandič, Miran Mohar, Andrej Savski, Roman Uranjek †, Borut Vogelnik) lives and works in Ljubljana. Their most recent solo exhibitions include, among others, Was ist Kunst, IRWIN? at HMKV, Dortmund (2023–2024) and NSK from Kapital to Capital, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2017). IRWIN has participated in many major international exhibitions, including the Collection 1980s–Present: After the Wall, MoMA–Museum of Modern Art, New York (2020); Hello World. Revision einer Sammlung, Hamburger Bahnhof–Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2018); 6th Taipei Biennial, Taipei (2010); 9th Istanbul Biennial (2005); 50th Venice Biennial (2003) and Manifesta 1, Rotterdam (1996). Their works are in public collections of, among others, mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (Vienna), Tate (London) and MoMa (NY).