Monday a.m. Artist Post 11/16

Roman Ondak.

Roman Ondak, installation and sculpture artist was born in 1966 in Zilina, Slovakia. He attended Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania in 1993 and in 1988-1994 he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, Slovakia. He currently works and lives in Bratislava, Slovakia. He has participated in many exhibitions across the world. In 2006 he took part in the Level 2 Gallery exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, in the same year he was in the XXVII Beinal of Sao Palo, in 2005 he participated in a show at the Contemporary Art Museum in Chicago, and in a show in Amsterdam in the year of 2004.

I first saw Ondak’s work when I visited the MoMA over the summer. When you first walk into the room where he had his installation set up all you see is scattered black marks on all white walls (four walls to be exact). There were a few people who worked for the museum who were standing around measuring everyone’s height who was waiting in line. They would draw a line at the spot on the wall where they came to and then would write in the date and the person’s name whom they just measured. I did not figure any of this out until I stood in place for several minutes and observed what was going on. The artist was absent. The only people who were in charge of this piece were the few museum employees who were taking charge and gathering everyone’s heights and names. This artist had craft fully concocted a concept and then someone else (a few someone elses) would act it out and see it through.

“Measuring the Universe” is the installation I spoke of before. “Viewers play a vital role in the creation of Measuring the Universe”. Over the course of the exhbition, 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” (an excerpt from the MoMA website). Also stated in that article was that Ondak intended for this piece to “turn domestic custom of recording children’s heights on door frames into a public event, referring through its title to humankind’s age-old desire to gauge the scale of the world. The process creates a work of art with a multitude of participants, merging art with everyday life in a confluence that is at the very center of Ondak’s artistic practice.”

I find myself attracted to his work because it is not completely performance art but it involves performance art mentality and concepts.


MoMA Article on Ondak

Kontakt Website
NY Art Beat Article
Frieze Article on Ondak
Tate Modern Article