23.09.–28.11.2010
Exhibition in the Great Hall

Roman Ondák
Before Waiting Becomes Part of Your Life

Opening:
September 22, 2010, 7 p.m.

Even before his culminating presentation at the Biennale in Venice (2009), the Slovakian artist, Roman Ondák was considered one of the most important representatives of contemporary art.

Roman Ondák was developing an installation “Before Waiting Becomes Part of Your Life” for Salzburg that reflected on the subject of the “queue.” In 2003, Ondák appeared in the Cologne Kunstverein for the first time with a staged queue that formed in front of the building every day. Images of this performance “Good Feelings in Good Times,” as they were published over years in a number of art magazines, brochures and catalogues, are presented in display cases constructed from found objects and blended with videos in which an artist’s wife teached their two children how to “stand in a queue.”

Roman Ondák’s works, which contain elements of performance, conceptual art, and audience participation, captivate through their ease and “uncapturability,” despite or precisely because of their formal precision. Social rituals and everyday situations that hardly attract attention are the subjects of Roman Ondák’s work. He often includes his audience or specially hired individuals in his concepts, thus making them co-producers of his works.

Roman Ondák, born in 1966 in Zilina, lives and works in Bratislava. In addition to numerous international exhibitions, such as his 2008 show in San Francisco or the 2006 show at the Tate Modern in London, Ondák represented Slovakia and the Czech Republic at the 53rd Biennale di Venezia in 2009.