“Deep Talk: IRWIN” – “Was ist Kunst, IRWIN?”
Kaput – Magazin für Insolvenz & Pop presents a thoughtful exploration of the Slovenian artist collective IRWIN, founded in 1983 as Rrose Irwin Sélavy. The members, Dušan Mandič, Miran Mohar, Andrej Savski, Roman Uranjek, and Borut Vogelnik, were young artists in their twenties from Ljubljana’s punk and graffiti scenes. Together with Laibach, the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theatre, and the design department New Collectivism (NK), they formed one of the main groups of the artist collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK), established in 1984.
The “Was ist Kunst, IRWIN?” exhibition, curated by Inke Arns and Thibaut de Ruyter, commemorates the 40th anniversary of IRWIN’s formation. The collective is renowned for engaging with the art history of Eastern Europe, particularly the ambiguous legacy of the historical avant-garde and its totalitarian successors. This exploration involves a dialectic of avant-garde and totalitarianism. Since the 1990s, IRWIN has critically and iconoclastically questioned the art history of “Western Modernism,” playfully juxtaposing it with their concept of “Retroavantgarde,” representing an “Eastern Modernism.”
A key feature of the exhibition is the NSK state in time, a state without territory, issuing passports as a “confirmation of temporal space.” The exhibition showcases two main themes: the persistent black humor in IRWIN’s works and their commentary on state-related issues like migration.
In the Museum Ostwall (MO), the exhibition displays “Was ist Kunst, Bernd und Hilla Becher?” by IRWIN, created using the nine-part series “Winding Towers” (1973–1989) by the German artist couple from the MO collection.
