Founded in 1983; all artists born in Slovenia, live and work in Ljubljana Dušan Mandič born in 1954; Miran Mohar born in 1958; Andrej Savski born in 1961; Roman Uranjek born in 1961; Borut Vogelnik born in 1959

Corpse of Art, 2003-2004, mixed-media installation (wood, textile, wax, hair, vase, flowers)

The Slovenian artists collective IRWIN frequently engages with the symbolism and aesthetics of the Eastern and Western European avant-gardes. Corpse of Art reconstructs the display of the Russian artist Kazimir Malevich’s corpse in his Leningrad flat in May 1935. Malevich’s body was presented in a coffin created by his student Nikolai Suetin according to Malevich’s own concept, and designed in the abstract geometric style of Suprematism. This installation includes Malevich’s painting Black Square, while eliminating two realist paintings by Malevich that originally flanked this Suprematist icon. In this manner, IRWIN both radicalizes and undermines Malevich’s totalitarian claim to have molded both his entire life and his own death. The installation thus simultaneously serves as a memorial to Malevich’s Suprematist utopia and as a symbol of its failure and appropriation by the communist regime. The omission of Malevich’s later compositions “purifies” him and transforms his last work – his own death – into a Suprematist oeuvre that preserves the utopian promise of the black square. It thus underscores the conflict between art as an autonomous cultural sphere, and art as political propaganda.