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In his seminal work Observations (1995/2011) Ondák cut from a book- perhaps a monograph on perception – a series of details comprising images and captions. Presented on the gallery walls singly or combined in diptychs and triptychs, these cuttings form a universal vocabulary of individual and collective relationships and exchanges, of physical movements, mental projections, momentary intuitions, or suspended states of mind on which the artist’s research is grounded. Hung at various levels, the images and their laconic texts capture subtle, nuanced psychological situations and ordinary attitudes through a balanced combination of similar and contrasting gestures, postures, and gazes. The exhibition space is “edited” by this intervention, and its indoor articulation reverberates with a constantly evoked outdoors, as well as in the recurrent “elsewhere” revealed in the cuttings themselves. In these works, where micro and macro mirror each other, Ondák does not provide an alternative to reality; rather, he gives the audience a key with which to access and identify the variety of different observations and interpretations that reality offers. On the occasion of dOCUMENTA(13), “Observations” is on view in its entirety for the first time, as an invitation, both giant and humble, to look.”
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