Introduction

In this exhibition featuring major recent works the internationally renowned Slovakian artist Roman Ondak takes toll of current social and political uncertainties. In a world of fake, alternative, and post facts the once reassuring epithet „based on true events" unsettles. What is true and who determines truth? And how far removed from truth is something that is only ‚based on' it? Roman Ondak's conceptual art has always teased questions like these, but never were they more topical than now.

Four large installation pieces are at the center of Based on True Events. In the main gallery, the installation Signature (2014) features a treasured Remington typewriter from Ondak's childhood home now disassembled into fifty individually mounted pieces. With New Observations (1995/2018), a series of mounted photographs appropriated from a 1950s book on human behavior, the artist premieres the sequel to his documenta 13 contribution Observations (1995/2011). The series of reliefs Planets I-IX, Eclipse (2016-2018) develops the artist's fascination with cosmological themes. His latest creation, Perfect Society (2018) addresses means and modes of communication and interaction. Roman Ondak rounds off this exhibition concept with smaller works that invite visitors to discover thematic and formal links between pieces. While each work can stand on its own, it is their specific collective arrangement that adds another and rather philosophical aspect to Ondak's work. Visitors and their perception of his art (and its variable crossovers) are assigned an important role in completing this presentation.

The works of Roman Ondak, while derived from deeply personal experience, offer universally valid and highly accessible insights. He is awarded the Lovis-Corinth-Preis 2018 for the humanistic and global vision of his ingenious art.