IN MEMORIAM | ROMAN URANJEK (1961–2022)
Roman Uranjek has passed away – an artist, founding member of the art group IRWIN and the collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK), author of At Least One Cross a Day since 2002, participating artist in numerous exhibition projects at the Moderna galerija since the early 1990s, and a friend to many of us working here.
Born in Trbovlje, a mining town that significantly marked his artistic career, Roman Uranjek was one of the key agents on the alternative art scene in Slovenia in the 1980s, being, among other things, one of the co-designers of the infamous Youth Day poster in 1987. He traveled the globe with the group IRWIN, their exhibitions staged in major museums and venues worldwide. They also frequently had exhibitions at the Moderna galerija, which holds several of their works in its collection.
The art group IRWIN and the NSK movement have played a consequential role in the history of contemporary art since the 1980s, both in Slovenia and in the wider East European region. As Zdenka Badovinac, who curated their major exhibitions, put it, they entered the international art arena with confidence, while remaining a product of the culture of a small nation that can only be successful if it recognizes its inherent eclecticism, based on both Eastern and Western cultural influences. Here the highly acclaimed exhibition NSK from Kapital to Capital should be mentioned, staged at Moderna galerija in 2015 and subsequently traveling to the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Garage in Moscow, and the National Museum Reina Sofia in Madrid.
Roman Uranjek will be remembered for his boundless enthusiasm and love of art and of everything creative, for the breadth of his erudition, and for his willingness to work and exchange ideas with the younger generations. He often stressed the pointlessness of doing what was “in” and trendy in art, and that instead an artist should aim for a recognizability that is not recognizable merely as the aesthetic of the moment. Prophetically, he said that the paradox of what we saw as a masterpiece was in that it was not defined by money or museums or art journals, but by artists who adopted that work as their creative point of reference at some later time.
Roman Uranjek was an influential cocreator of the Slovenian art scene, which will never be the same without him.
His friends, colleagues, and collaborators from Moderna galerija
