One of the most prominent artists of the contemporary Slovenian art scene, he was a founding member of the world-renowned group Irwin and the political art organization NSK.
The artist, born in Trbovlje in 1961, entered the scene with the Irwins in 1983, and later he continued his recognizable independent artistic path. Of this, the project At least one cross per day stands out the most, which he started on the first day of January in 2002, and he created crosses, a kind of artistic intervention into various more or less well-known images of the past and the present, until the last day.
In the massive opus of more than 25,000 crosses, the symbol, which is also one of the key icons of the recognizable Irwin collective, is repeated repeatedly. This was founded by Uranjek together with Dušan Mandič, Miran Mohar, Andrej Savski and Borut Vogelnik. The group is part of the broader NSK collective, which was founded in 1984. In addition to the Irwins, its founders are the multimedia group Laibach (1980) and the theater group Gledališče Sester Scipion Nasice (1983–1987). At the same time, all three groups founded a fourth group, the New Collectivism design department.
At the time of its creation, the NSK opposed the ideology of the socialist one-party system, and in the following decade marked the transformation of the former socialist society into a society of global capitalism.
To date, the works of the Irwins have appeared in almost all the world’s most prestigious contemporary art exhibitions, and are also included in many collections. The Irwin group is valued as one of the co-creators of contemporary art in Eastern Europe.
“Our idea took as a starting point historical avant-gardes such as the Bauhaus and post-war movements such as Fluxus,” Uranjek said some time ago about their beginnings. Various poetics developed in the NSK’s activities, which the members produced, following their own rules and expressing themselves in their own media. They were interested in the relationship between ideology and art, and in this process they converted ideas about originality and authenticity and distanced themselves from fundamental national myths and constructs through various travel procedures.
In his own work, Uranjek continued a similar artistic contemplation, dealing with icons and symbols, as a gateway to the path of dealing with trauma. By collecting images from different periods and environments – whether it was a reproduction of a famous work of art or a postcard from a resort – he created his own narrative, always based on avant-garde aesthetics, using the technique of collage and intervention.
While working with the Irwins, Uranjek also collaborated with an artist Radenko Milak, with whom they have been creating the Dates project since 2014. In the last period, he also worked as a curator of exhibitions, where he connected different generations of artists.
He said many times that Mozart and Bach were first modern artists, only then they became classics. “If you want to become a classic, you must first be modern.”
