IRWIN artist group (Slovenia) will present its communication project East Art Map at PinchukArtCentres Project Room (the 5th floor) from May 20 till June 8, 2008. At the exhibition, the group will present East Art Map Book, Internet version of the project, Art Map of Eastern Europe light-box, and 2 video projects, as well.
On May 21, 2008, at 18:00, the group members Andrej Savski and Roman Uranek will give a lecture at video-lounge (the 6th floor). Admission is free.
As the authors put it, the aim of East Art Map is to show the art of the whole space of Eastern Europe, to take artists out of their national frameworks and to present them in a unified scheme. We would like to display the practical fundamental relations between Eastern European artists there where they have not been documented, to draw a sort of a clear and user-friendly map of the art of Eastern Europe rather than to get some theoretical true thereof. History is not given. It has to be constructed.
The group worked over East Art Map project (www.eastartmap.org) from 1999 till 2005. The project is a sort of a guidebook through the contemporary art of Eastern Europe and its relations with Western arts, social and political history.
Initially, Irwin invited a group of 24 eminent art critics, curators and artists from the different ex-socialist Central, Eastern and South-Eastern countries to perform and to show 250 crucial art projects and artworks from their respective countries. Upon the results thereof, in 2006, it published the project book. The next step, technically as well as conceptually, is to transfer the EAM onto Internet and to open it up for contributions by its users, the general public and specialists being invited to participate in discussion, which may, for sure, change the topography of the map: ..the map is composed and developed from the dialogue that provides for a transparent procedure and facilitates engagement in the project of different people with different opinions on the project (Katrin Klingan, Movement through unknown territory).
General information:
Contacts: PinchukArtCentre, Tel.: +38 044 590 08 58, e-mail: info@pinchukartcentre.org, www.pinchukartcentre.org
Contacts for mass media: Denis Kazvan, +38 044 494 11 48, kazvan@pinchukfund.org
Address: PinchukArtCentre Bessarabsky Kvartal, Block A, 1/3-2 Krasnoarmeyskaya/Basseynaya St., A01 004, Kyiv, Ukraine
Open hours: Tuesday through Sunday: 12:00 - 21:00
Closed Monday
Admission is free.
Additional information:
IRWIN is an artist group founded in 1983, in Ljubljana (Slovenia), by Dusan Mandic, Roman Uranek, Borut Vogelnik, Miran Mohar, and Andrej Savski. The group pursues its clear action program using retrogradism and organic eclecticism as two basic principles. In their pieces of arts, the artists realize ironic dualism combining the tradition, including figures of Slovenian history, culture, icons of suprematism and symbols of totalitarian arts, with radicalism.
In 1984, IRWIN together with Laibach music band and Scipion Nasice Sisters theatrical group established an informal association NSK (German Neue Slowenische Kunst). In 1991, NSK was transformed into a virtual state which is not associated with any space, but is evolving in the time. It developed its own passport, stamps, etc., has its electronic embassy to Internet that periodically opens its offices during art visits to other countries, the collective absolutism being declared as NSK organizational principle, and the immanent transcendent spirit as the president of the state.
The solo projects of IRWIN group have been presented in museums, centers, and galleries of New York, Paris, Moscow, Warsaw, Vienna, Dusseldorf, Budapest, Cologne, and Aarhus. The group participated in large international projects and actions, including Manifest 1, After Wall exhibition at the Stockholm Museum of Contemporary Arts, as well as at biennales in Sydney, Istanbul (twice), and in Venice (twice).
East Art Map Book was published in 2006, by Afterall publications. The book is a culmination and fusion of more than twenty-year efforts dedicated to studying the Eastern Europe arts and their status. The project was developed in two stages: from 1999 till 2002, and from 2002 till 2005. Thus, the book consists of two sections. The first section shows a map of the history and development of arts in Eastern Europe, within the period from 1945 till the present day. The second sections contains 17 essays with description of specific aspects of this process and deals with issues arising in the course of the study of arts and the systems (rather than one system) of arts in Eastern Europe.
