In this volume Roman Ondák has brought together some of his works that deal with time, measurement, displacement of people and places, presence and absence, and surveying along with those that make visible what evades the visual, namely boundaries and experience. Alongside a complete documentation of the exhibition Measuring the Universe, where the museum attendants checked the body size of the visitors throughout its duration, one also finds Failed Fall (2008), a greenhouse's floor filled with dried autumn leaves, Across that Place (2008), the story of the no longer existing Canal Zone by the Panama Canal, and Concealed Episode (2007), which recounts the fictional escape to Miami South Beach of a parachutist from Cuba.
Whether working with installation, photography, drawing, or performance, the Slovak artist Roman Ondák (*1966) underpins his work with processes, embedding them into the course of an action. The action extends over time, transcribes a scenario rather than explaining it, and can be attached to radically minimalist objects, or to extremely narrative books.
Roman Ondák who represented the Slovak Republic at the 2009 Venice Biennial, tracks down situation which without his intervention would perhaps have remained unnoticed, and charges them with new energy. With aesthetic, social, and political energy.
