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. |
