Roman ondak biography
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Galerie Martin Janda
Born 1966 in Žilina (SK)
Lives and works in Bratislava (SK)
Roman Ondak often uses unpretentious elements and objects from everyday life in his installations and sculptures, he integrates them into slightly estranged or displaced situations, recontextualising them and thus opening a space for new thoughts and interpretations. Like an ethnographer, Roman Ondak delves into his own personal history and the archive of human memory.
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Roman Ondak
Roman Ondak was born 1966 in Zilina, Slovakia. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava and halt Rock University in Pennsylvania. The artist lives and works in Bratislava.
Roman Ondak represented Slovakia at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. In 2012, he participated in dOCUMENTA (13) and was named Artist of the Year by Deutsche Bank in Berlin. Ondak is recipient of the Lovis-Corinth Prize 2018.
Ondak’s work evolves from a performative conception and consists of sculpture, installation, photography, drawing and performance. The artist often uses found objects. His medium is the everyday and society’s sets of expectations, assumptions, automatisms and projections that shape our perception of reality. Although the collaborative approach is not always immediately visible, Ondak has also foregrounded the production of object-based elements by others: For his series of drawings and objects entitled Common Trip, for example, the
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Roman Ondak
1966
Show artist artworksBiography
(*1966, Žilina)
(*1966, Žilina) One of the most distinctive representatives of post-conceptual tendencies, Roman Ondak has received the most international recognition from among Slovak artists. He works with surrounding reality – its poetic staging and contextual shifts. He likes to pull spectators into the game through constant, contradictory and unexpected shifts of meaning. He frequently varies visual perceptions. Through the use of different means and even disturbing activities, he established a new balance while employing the most diverse possible artistic forms and media: drawing, video recording, photography, performance, sculpture and installation. Nowadays, his work features “playful”, minimalist interior situations and interventions in an environment whose hints thematize disturbances and deviations in various cultural and social relations, interpersonal communication and living situations.
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