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9/3/2007

Roman Ondak

BAK basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht

The Day After Yesterday

BAK, basis voor actuele kunst presents the solo exhibition The Day After Yesterday by Slovak-born artist Roman Ondak. In this exhibition Ondak shows three new works, which register performative moments he instigated in order to negotiate another kind of a future through "non-events" -subtle detours from the everyday.

The Day After Yesterday, 2005, is a diptych that consists of newspaper cut-out and a photograph. The photograph shows a re-enactment of a “scene” coincidentally photographed for the newspaper, in which Ondak’s family walks through a dilapidated neighborhood under rapid renovation. In order to seek ways in which “reality” could be perfected, Ondak invites his family to re-stage this situation, although this time they are walking in the opposite direction, toward the viewer. The video The Stray Man, 2006, documents a man walking past a building. The ordinariness of the situation notwithstanding, the man cannot resist the attraction of the building’s street level windows. Despite his attempts to continue along the street, the potential promise of other possibilities prompts him to return daily to engage in this ritual of searching for the unknown time and time again. Lucky Day, 2006, is a 16 mm film installation in which Ondak explores the contemporary possibilities of “pilgrimage” in a secular context. The film follows a man who tosses a large amount of coins into a fountain, in a somewhat grandiose gesture of “applying” for luck. As such, the work puts individual agency to the test against institutionalized systems of belief. In all three works, the adventure of discovery, and of gaining knowledge into how things are, function as a starting point for engaging the viewer in a dialogue about what might happen if one takes another route, both literally and metaphorically. It is from here, Ondak suggests, that a new space of imagination can emerge.

BAK is proud to have had the opportunity to produce the film installation Lucky Day. A new catalog on the work of Roman Ondak, including essays by Jessica Morgan, curator, Tate Modern, London, Jan Verwoert, curator and critic, Berlin, and Maria Hlavajova, artistic director, BAK, is published by BAK in collaboration with Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck in late spring of this year.

Roman Ondak (born 1966 in Zilina, lives and works in Bratislava) recently presented his work in Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck (2007), Tate Modern, London (2006), Sao Paulo Biennial, Sao Paulo (2006), Kunsthaus Graz, Graz (2006) and Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2005).

Lecture:
Thursday 19 April 2007 at 20 Jessica Morgan, curator of Tate Modern, London gives a lecture on the work of Roman Ondak.

Image: Roman Ondák, Lucky Day, 2006, photograph from the film set

Opening: 10 March 2007 at 20

BAK basis voor actuele kunst
Launge Nieuwstrasse 4 - Utrecht
Opening hours: Wednesday-Saturday 12–17; Sunday 13-17

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