When the group Rrose Irwin Sélavy was founded in Yugoslavia in 1983 its members DuSan Mandic
(1954 Ljubljana) Miran Mohar (1958 Novo Mesto) Andrej Savski (1961 Ljubljana) Roman
Uranjek (1961 Trbovlje +2022 Ljubljana) and Borut Vogelnik (*1959 Kranj) were aged between
22 and 29. They all came from the punk and graffiti scene of Ljubljana. Together with the music
group Laibach the theater of the sisters Scipio Nasicas and the designers from Neuer
Kollektivismus (New Collectivism) IRWIN is still one of the main groups of the artists'
collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (New Slovenian Art) founded in 1984. This volume is
published to mark the 40th anniversary of the artists' collective and to accompany the
exhibition at HMKV Dortmund. Since 1983 IRWIN has been investigating the art history of
Eastern Europe especially the ambivalent legacy of the historical avant-garde and its
totalitarian successors i.e. the dialectic of avant-garde and totalitarianism. Since the 1990s
the focus of the group has been on challenging the art history of Western Modernism in a
critical and iconoclastic way. The artists playfully and darkly contrast it with the retro
avant-garde and an Eastern Modernism. The book which can be read from both sides is made up
of two parts: the first chapter explores the black humor that is a consistent element in
IRWIN's work. The second chapter examines issues relating to the state - and how IRWIN uses
them to comment on current topics such as migration.
