Measuring the Universe

Artist's book

In this volume the Slovak artist Roman Ondák (*1966) has brought together some of his works that deal with time, measurement, 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 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, Ondák 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—as in this case—to extremely narrative books. Anything that plays a role in his work has its place in this book: the displacement of people and places, presence and absence, the economy of time.

Roman Ondák, who represented the Slovak Republic at the 2009 Venice Biennial, tracks down situations which, without his intervention, would perhaps have remained unnoticed, and charges them with new energy–aesthetic, social, and political energy.

The publication is part of the series of artists’ projects by Christoph Keller Editions in collaboration with BAWAG Foundation.