Roman Ondák

Measuring the Universe . 2007

+ gb agency . moma

Over the course of the exhibition, attendants mark Museum visitors' heights, first names, and date of the measurement on the gallery walls. Beginning as an empty white space, over time the gallery gradually accumulates the traces of thousands of people.
moma

Roman Ondak is part of a new generation from Slovakia-a country that until recently was part of the ex-Soviet Bloc--who at nearly the same have lived time through both a period of political idealism tempered by reality and their country's accommodation to new international systems and participation a changing Europe. Aspects of Ondak's work show signs of these identity shifts.
He imbues his drawings, installations, environments, photos and performances with social stratifications in addition to conceptual ones. Each piece is another step in an evolving process he develops and stimulates. Using a real fact, a place, a trip, or an experience as a starting point, Roman Ondak informally presents a fiction of his own making, full of repetitions. He sets the scene and the subject, and different filters skew the infinite replay of each story. Memory holds a critical place in his work since it implies experience, the past and its meaning, but also because it opens the way for imagination and the unconscious.
gb agency