SPIRIT AND OPPORTUNITY
1 May – 27 June 2004 | Opening: 30 April | 7 pm
"As a sign of solidarity with recent world events, for
the next minute do not interrupt the activity you are doing at this
moment.”
During a visit to a group exhibition, museum visitors heard this
announcement at regular intervals. A museum attendant had obviously
tuned his radio to a station, where this sentence from Roman Ondák
was repeatedly interwoven with the current news by a speaker with
an Eastern European accent. This communication entitled "Announcement"
(2002) seemed to the exhibition visitors like a sudden interruption
in the everyday routine of the museum. It was understood by the
museum visitors as a call to behave in a certain manner and to become
a part of the exhibition through this perfomative act. This kind
of playing with meanings, context and imagination is one of the
central moments in Ondák's artistic thinking. At the same
time, Roman Ondák develops a strong intimacy with the people
involved as viewers or protagonists.
For “Antinomads” (2000) Roman Ondák photographed
friends, relatives and acquaintances in their private surroundings,
who do not want to travel. These pictures were reproduced as postcards
and displayed in remote exhibition locations. As with any other
postcards, they were acquired by tourists and sent all over the
world. In this way, the "Antinomads" paradoxically became
world travelers, as Ondák contrasted the temporal and spatial
standstill with a new option for agency uniting both, being settled
and being mobile.
As observer of our reality, Ondák records his everyday perceptions
in the form of drawings and notes. From these he develops his artistic
interventions that recursively impact the real world through context
shifts and poetic mise-en-scènes. By means of a constant
and contradictory transfer of meanings, the introduction of unexpected
actions in a place wholly inscribed with expectations, or through
the repetition of the same picture in different media, he supplements
our accustomed balance of processes of perception with a significantly
disruptive counterbalance. In this way, he unmasks our laboriously
achieved balance of collective processes of constructing content,
meaning, and their associated emotions. Roman Ondák works
here with the most diverse artistic media, such as drawing, performance,
sculpture or installation.
For his exhibition at the Kölnischer Kunstverein – Roman
Ondák's first major solo exhibition – he has developed
a sculptural in-situ work. Here too, a space of experience emerges,
which is filled with shifting, swelling, and unexpected perspectives.
He contrasts reality with his own counter-proposal of a world that
becomes a poetic setting of secret, unpredictable, random modes
of behavior and collective desires. The exhibition space assumes
the materiality of a spatial object, which has the effect of a foreign
body that is inserted in reality, but is inseparable from it at
the same time.
For the exhibition a comprehensive monograph is published for the
first time with works by Roman Ondák since the nineties.
It includes essays by Georg Schöllhammer, Igor Zabel and Hans
Ulrich Obrist in German and English.
Biography
Roman Ondák was born in 1966 in Žilina (Slovakia). He
lives and works in Bratislava.
Exhibitions (selected): Generali Foundation, Wien (2004); Haus der
Kunst, München (2003); &:gb agency, Paris (2003); 50. Biennale
di Venezia (2003); Gallery Display, Praha (2003); Kunsthalle Zürich
(2003); Museum Ludwig, Köln (2002); Begane Grond, Utrecht (2002);
Apex Art C.P., New York (2000); Manifesta 3, Ljubljana (2000); Moderna
Museet, Stockholm (1999); Ludwig Museum, Budapest (1999); Manifesta
1, Rotterdam (1996)
Exhibition Discussion
Frank Frangenberg (author and art theoretican, Cologne) with Roman
Ondák.
18 June, 7 pm
Exhibition Tours
21 May, 15 June, 6 pm Kathrin Rhomberg
Opening Hours
Tuesday to Saturday, 1 pm to 7 pm
Projekt Migration – a project initiated by the
sponsored by
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