Ondák
Roman OndákRoman Ondák’s Letter to the Slovakian minister of culture serves as a characteristic example of analytical, post-conceptual thought. At the same time, it illustrates Ondák’s development away from objects and installation towards staging temporary situations and imaginative sitespecific constructions that predict various communication patterns in behavior and in the perception of things. The question formulated in the Letter alludes to a series of references and cultural interpretations: the balancing act between artistic freedom and the artist’s dependence on institutions (to this day, there is still no museum for
contemporary art in Slovakia). It is a message at the level of action, of gesture, that unsettles and raises expectations triggered by this information—an antiletter, an anti- application, an anti-event. The Letter was presented in poster form at the 50th Venice Biennial in 2003 as part of the Utopia Station project; its counterpoint was the concept of a stone slab—a “foundation stone” of the virtual museum at the end of the Arsenale. Roman Ondak Resistance, 2006 The work of Roman Ondak consists of subtle interventions into sociocultural structures, which denote processes in society that are often outside of direct public visibility. His intervention entitled “Resistance” was a performance carried out at the opening of the exhibition “Kontakt… works from the collection of Erste Bank Group” at the Viennese Museum of Modern Art (MUMOK) on March 16, 2006. The video shows a number of people who have their shoelaces untied, standing and walking around in the exhibition space. By focusing on the feet of the people at the opening, the identity of the protagonists remains hidden as the camera pans towards the floor, capturing mostly black shoes and open laces. Fellow visitors were puzzled by this intervention, since there was no direct clue as to why certain people were posing this way. Thus Ondak queries the bondage, not necessarily visible, of certain peer groups, in this case through the need of people working in the field of art to proclaim otherness as a means counterbalancing social standardization. |
