Roman Ondák, do not walk outside this area. Photo: © Roman Ondák
|
Roman Ondák, do not walk outside this area, 2012. Installation view, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin. Photo: Jens Ziehe. Courtesy the artist
|
Roman Ondák, do not walk outside this area, 2012. Installation view, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin. Photo: Jens Ziehe. Courtesy the artist
|
Roman Ondák, Leap, 2012. Installation view, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin. Photo: Jens Ziehe. Courtesy the artist
|
Roman Ondák, Leap, 2012. Installation view, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin. Photo: Jens Ziehe. Courtesy the artist
|
Roman Ondák, Loop, 2009. Collage © Courtesy Roman Ondák; gb agency, paris; Galerie Martin Janda, Wien; Johnen Galerie, Berlin; kurimanzutto, Mexico City
|
Portrait of the artist. Photo: Fabrizio Giraldi © Roman Ondák
|
Roman Ondák, Glimpse, 2010.Drawing from a series of 12. Pencil on found old print. Collection Morra Greco, Naples.© Roman Ondák
|
Roman Ondák, Spirit and Opportunity, 2004. Surface of Mars reconstructed in a gallery based on images published in newspapers and magazines. Installation Kölnischer Kunstverein. Courtesy the artist, gb agency, Paris, Janda gallery, Vienna and Johnen gallery, Berlin. Photo: © Roman Ondák
|
Balancing at the Toe of the Boot, 2010 (detail). Series of 7 postcards and 16 fictional newspaper cuttings. Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, 2011. © Courtesy Roman Ondák; gb agency, paris; Galerie Martin Janda, Wien; Johnen Galerie, Berlin; kurimanzutto, Mexico City
|
Balancing at the Toe of the Boot, 2010 (detail). Series of 7 postcards and 16 fictional newspaper cuttings. Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, 2011. © Courtesy Roman Ondák; gb agency, paris; Galerie Martin Janda, Wien; Johnen Galerie, Berlin; kurimanzutto, Mexico City
|
Awaiting Enacted, 2003 Serie von 16 Zeitungscollagen Jeweils zwischen 18.8x27.8 cm und 31.2x47.6 cm © Courtesy Roman Ondák; gb agency, paris; Galerie Martin Janda, Wien; Johnen Galerie, Berlin; kurimanzutto, Mexico City
|
Roman Ondák, Loop, 2009. Preliminary drawing for installation. Courtesy the artist. © Roman Ondák
|
Roman Ondák, Measuring the Universe, 2007.For the whole duration of the exhibition museum attendants offer to the exhibition visitors marking their height on the gallery walls along with their first name and the date on which the measurement was taken. Performance at MoMA, New York. Photo: Profzucker.© Roman Ondák
|
|
|
It’s a typical situation during an airplane flight: suspended somewhere
between boredom and relaxation, you look out the window and happen to
see this strange warning written on the wing: DO NOT WALK OUTSIDE THIS
AREA. Who is this prohibition directed at? At any rate, the sentence
seems particularly absurd during the flight. But it’s this very
sentence that provides the title to Roman
Ondák’s current project, which he conceived especially for
the Deutsche
Guggenheim. And indeed, an airplane wing plays a key role
here: the path through the installation leads over the gigantic wing of
a Boeing
737-500, which connects the two exhibition rooms like a
bridge.
The show presents works on paper and installations based on the subject
of traveling, for instance Balancing at the Toe of the Boot—a
series of seven postcards and sixteen fictitious newspaper articles
made in 2010 for the exhibition Un’Espressione
Geografica in the renowned Fondazione Sandretto Re
Rebaudengo in Turin. In the show, which was curated by Francesco
Bonami to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of
the state of Italy, 20 international artists dedicated themselves to a
single region of the country—for Ondák it was Calabria. Together with
his wife Mária, he traveled through the south of Italy and sent
postcards to Bonami with the single sentence “WE ARE STILL ALIVE.” This
was meant as an homage to the conceptual artist On
Kawara, who sent a legendary series of telegrams reading “I
AM STILL ALIVE. ON KAWARA” to his friends in the 1970s. Likewise, this
laconic statement by the Ondáks comes across as an ironic allusion to
the widespread cliché of Calabria as the breeding ground of organized
crime.
In order to move back and forth between the two parts of the
exhibition, the visitor has to climb over the Boeing wing and cross the
line with the warning DO NOT WALK OUTSIDE THIS AREA. Exhibition
visitors are thus forced to tread upon the very area that one can
normally only see from inside the airplane. Thus, Ondák’s wing is not a
pristine sculpture, but a utilitarian object that one should walk on.
The airplane wing serves as a gangplank, but also as a runway for our
ideas, memories, and fantasies. In an age of global mobility, the
artist invites us to embark on an inner imaginary journey.
“do not walk outside this area” is the third exhibition of an “Artist
of the Year” at the Deutsche Guggenheim. The series began in 2010 with
the New York-based Kenyan artist Wangechi
Mutu. After its premiere in Berlin, her exhibition
project My
Dirty Little Heaven was shown in several other
international exhibition venues, as was Yto
Barrada’s show Riffs (“Artist of
the Year” 2011). After its sojourns at the WIELS in Brussels and the
Renaissance Society in Chicago, Riffs
travels to furter renowned art institutions: IKON Gallery
in Birmingham, MACRO
in Rome, and the Fotomuseum
Winterthur
. Like the
corporate collection, the Deutsche Bank award is committed entirely to
contemporary work. On the recommendation of the Deutsche Bank Global Art Advisory Council,
to which the renowned curators Okwui Enwezor, Hou Hanru, Udo
Kittelmann, and Nancy Spector belong, the honor is bestowed on
promising international artists. The prizewinners must have already
created a unique and exceptional oeuvre in which works on paper or
photography—the two points of concentration of the Deutsche Bank
Collection—play a key role.
The award is not financial in nature, but is an integral part of
Deutsche Bank’s art program that has been opening up the world of
contemporary art to the public for the last thirty years—through
Deutsche Bank’s own substantial collection, exhibitions, and joint
projects with its partners. The “Artist of the Year” is featured in a
solo exhibition at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin, and the
exhibition subsequently moves on to other international institutions.
An exclusive edition designed by the artist and a catalog appear
concurrently with the exhibition. In addition, on this occasion a
selection of the artist’s works on paper are acquired for the Deutsche
Bank Collection.
|
