The autumn season of am projects will open with a memorial exhibition of Slovenian artist Roman Uranjek (1961–2022), parallel to the solo show of Radenko Milak in Ani Molnar Gallery’s main exhibition space.
ROMAN URANJEK: across the universe
Curated by Ani Molnár and Dr. Imre Balogh
9 October – 29 November 2025
am projects, Budapest
The exhibition on view in am projects is from selected works prepared by Roman Uranjek in the framework of the IRWIN artist collective, as well as Uranjek’s own, independent works. Several pieces in the exhibition are being shown in Hungary for the first time.
Uranjek’s artistic practice is deeply rooted in the historical, political and cultural developments that shaped the artistic scene in Yugoslavia and the independent countries emerging within its former boundaries. In the 1980s, as Yugoslavia moved towards crisis, Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) emerged in the radical alternative art scene as a provocative collective uniting the music group Laibach, the theatre collective Scipion Nasisce Sisters, and the visual art group IRWIN.
IRWIN employed painting, iconography, installations and performances following the retro principle which challenged linear narratives of art history by recycling avant-garde iconography into new constellations. The use/reuse/re-appropriation of already existing images, styles, symbols as a method of critical examination of art history, contrasted the canon of Western modernism with the “retro-avantgarde” of fictitious “Eastern European modernism”.
Roman Uranjek, the co-founder of IRWIN and NSK, having followed also an individual artistic practice of his own, was a key figure in shaping the Slovene and regional art scene by fostering various collaborations as well. He often worked with emerging Slovenian artists as a mentor and collaborator, emphasizing horizontal dialogue rather than hierarchical teaching. While conceived as a personal daily ritual, Uranjek’s daily cross drawings and collages also became a framework for collaborations with other artists. The most enduring and notable of this type of co-operation were their “Dates” project together with Radenko Milak.
The artist worked on his series “At Least One Cross a Day” from 2002 until his death. In this monumental, constantly expanding project, the cross appears with diverse artistic means and in different contexts, reinterpreting its layers of meaning. Uranjek’s cross-works speak to broader European concerns: about memory, trauma, history, religion, nationalism, imagery in media. His way of using a minimal but loaded sign (the cross) as collages/interventions on thousands of media images (often layered, altered, reframed), creates a kind of personal diary with a universal resonance. In the current exhibition in Ani Molnar Gallery, special emphasis is placed on Uranjek’s artworks interwoven with the characteristic cross motif.
Roman Uranjek’s art was focusing on the dialogue between collective and individual memory, historical context and contemporary reflection. The exhibition not only commemorates one of the significant figures of Central European neo-avantgarde and Eastern European modernism, but also provides the domestic audience with the opportunity to discover previously unseen parts of his oeuvre from a new perspective.
