Roman Uranjek
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Starting from January 1, 2002, the day when the Euro has become the official currency in the European Union, Roman Uranjek drew the first cross intervening on the European currency Euro, commencing the project titled At Least One Cross A Day After 1.1.2002, thus on a daily basis producing works in which he uses the cross inspired by his overall symbolic (semantic, religious, mythological, erotic ...) meaning as a universal motif present in our everyday lives. With this he began a project to which he dedicated his artistic and ideological concept. The concept is based on use of books, magazines, photographs, flyers… whereby with artistic interventions he draws a cross and gives new meaning to the previously represented. Uranjek on already given matrices of reproduction of a work of art history or reproductions from the printed media, draws a cross-shaped form changing the visual side of the previous image, and thus the semantics of thereproduced segments. In this case it is a matter of recognition of two elements in one work: template-copyand intervention-original in which the artistic intervention creates a field of co-authorship and new interpretationof the work. With this project Uranjek, orderly and obsessively, on a daily basis creates new works following the artistic principle not to have a single day without at least a line drawn.
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The project developed in several thematic sections, in which the basic idea or form is based on diary entries.
One of the sections as a collection of books are the photographs of a cross taken daily, commencing from the date 29.06.2008. Each book consists of around 48 photographs, which means 48 days and 48 photographs, where the symbol of cross is present.The book is a photo diary in which daily photographing of a cross present or created in everyday life has been made. Also, every book always includes at least one original drawing (At Least One Cross A Day After 1.1.2002).
The next collection of books consists of original books, in which it has been intervened within the rangeof Roman crosses. It is a complex ensemble. Here, the original approach of the artist is present in each page of the book. These books can be divided in books-diaries for each year staring from 2005 until 2013, where Uranjek on a daily basis creates a work applied in the book, thus making a kind of diary of visualentries. The next cycle of books are works of current inspiration,
intervening on reproductions in art books monographsand books on art) such as Lucian Freud, PabloPicasso, Goya, Dadaism, Abstract Expressionism, Il Futurismo etc...
fragment of the text by Gorancho Gjorgjievski
Roman Uranjek, artist, born in 1961 in Trbovlje, Slovenia
Co-founded IRWIN Group (1983) , Neue Slowenische Kunst group (NSK) (1984), Novi Kolektivizem group (1985). Launched the projects At Least One Cross a Day After 1.1.2002 (still in progress) and Artists Book 29.6.2008. Started the photo diary One Cross a Day (2005). Takes part in exhibitions as a member of the IRWIN Group since 1983 (Dušan Mandič, Miran Mohar, Andrej Savski, Roman Uranjek, Borut Vogelnik).