Roman Ondák: Time Capsule at Modern Art Oxford on artrepublic.com
Exhibition running from Mar 12 2011
until May 20 2011
This spring Modern Art Oxford presents two new works by Slovakian artist Roman Ondák, in his first major solo exhibition in the UK. Roman Ondák’s work has a conceptual and performative focus and at its core, an interest in transferring real life experiences into the context of art. For the exhibition Time Capsule, Ondák expands on this trajectory with the creation of two new works that reference recent world events. The first work, an installation entitled Time Capsule, makes direct reference to the incident at the San José mine in Chile in 2010, in which 33 miners were trapped 700 meters below ground for 69 days. The miners were in the end raised from the mine through a drilled escape shaft and by the use of the rescue capsule called Fenix 2. Ondák has created an exact replica of the capsule, which will be installed in the darkened gallery and connected by a rope to an escape shaft attached to the gallery’s ceiling. Where Time Capsule evokes the isolation experienced in the mine, the performance Stampede – its counterpoint executed in the second gallery – touches on the other extreme, when people experience overcrowded situations. For this work, Ondák stages a performance involving a large crowd of people walking into and out of the darkened gallery prior to the exhibition. The traces of the performance will be then left evident. Taking on a variety of forms, from installation and photography to drawing and performance, Ondák's work makes subtle interventions into social and cultural structures and crosses the borders between art and everyday life, the private and the public, the personal and the institutional. For Loop, 2009, designed for the Czech and Slovak Pavilion at the 2009 Venice Biennale, Ondák extended the gardens outside through the pavilion itself, playing with viewers’ experience of interior and exterior, reality and the exhibition space. In Measuring the Universe, 2007, gallery attendants marked viewers’ heights, first names, and the date of the measurement on the gallery walls, so that over time the gallery gradually accumulated the traces of thousands of visitors. Showing concurrently with Roman Ondák: Time Capsule will be Michael Sailstorfer from 12 March – 22 May 2011. OPENING HOURS: Tue & Wed: 10.00 – 17.00, Thur – Sat: 10.00 – 22.00, Sun: 12.00 – 17.00 Roman OndákTime Capsule, 2011, InstallationCourtesy the artist.Commissioned by Modern Art Oxford, and supported by The Henry Moore Foundation and Outset Contemporary Art Fund.Photography by Stuart Whipps  |
