Projekt Slovenske Atene je označevalo razstavo, pripravljeno leta 1991 v Moderni galeriji v Ljubljani, na katero so Irwini povabili vse najpomembnejše jugoslovanske umetnike, da bi interpretirali Groharjevega Sejalca (1907). Z repeticijo naj bi se motiv sejalca transformiral v monumentalno formo, s čimer bi se ponovil proces, podoben delovanju ideologije, ki ne proizvede originala, temveč prek ponavljanja lastnih podob proizvede moč.
The project Slovenske Atene (Slovenian Athens,1991) an exhibition project which was initiated by IRWIN took place in Moderna Galerija in 1991.
For the exhibition Slovenske Atene, artists from Yugoslavia were invited to deal with the motif of the sower. IRWIN wrote in the letter of invitation:”[The sower] is a commonly recognizable theme in the memory of European culture, the emblem of sowing and harvesting, sacrificing and giving, the soil and man, fertile matter and moral beauty and power. This is also a national motif which speaks of man’s ties with the land, an infinitely picturesque idyll which, nevertheless, contains an existential conflict between the greedy glow of the soil against the extra-temporal, immaculate superiority of the sower’s knowledge. The harmony of sowing is a primal picture of thecontact of two instruments joined in the fateful meaning of passage and renovation. A moment stolen from eternity, in which a hand, doomed to the abyss of the earth, unclenches its fist, to fertilize its existence. This is both a reconciliation and a challenge, a climax of the elegance of man’s culture, an act of his will, an attitude of his wisdom.”(IRWIN. Epistle to the co-authors of the ‘Slovenske Atene’ project (1985). In: NSK 1991. 140.)
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