Roman Ondák has parked a number of cars in the parking lot behind the Secession building. These cars are conspicuous, not only because they do not correspond to the conventional and contemporary design of cars in Vienna, but also because of their Slovak number plates and country designation. Through the duration of the exhibition, this public parking lot behind a tourist landmark
exclusively located in the middle of the city and normally closed to other cars, is thus filled with cars that are clearly identified as coming from one of Austria’s Eastern neighboring countries. In a city with a chronic lack of parking spaces, where the privilege of being able to park one’s car in exclusive locations is just
as much a part of image transfer as the car itself, Ondák’s intervention represents an affront at many levels. Most of all, the origin of the cars is irritating to an Austrian self-understanding that is founded in a supposed economic superiority over and disassociation from the surrounding Eastern European countries. At another symbolic level of meaning, the occupation of an exclusive location by cars from Eastern Europe may be read as a clearly imperialist gesture, thus addressing latent fears and xenophobia as an expression of increasing insecurity. In any case, the presence of the Slovak cars in the Secession parking lot forces passers by to question why they are parked there and to wonder about the owners, thus giving them attention that they would otherwise not receive. With this intervention, Ondák creates a shift of meaning in the perception of reality and its (non)representation, in which the extraordinary is revealed in the ordinary, and the ordinary in that which we call extraordinary.
— Kathrin Rhomberg

Selected solo exhibitions: 2003: &: gb agency, Paris; 2000: MK, Rotterdam; Kunsthof, Zurich; 1999: Ludwig Museum, Budapest
Selected group exhibitions: 2003: 50a Biennale di Venezia; Czechoslovakia, Slovak National Museum, Bratislava; Real Utopia, Rotor, Graz; Opening Show, Kunstverein, Cologne; Spheres of Valency, City Gallery, Bratislava; Durchzug/Draft, Kunsthalle, Zurich; 4th Austrian Triennial of Photography, Graz; 2002: I promise it’s political, Ludwig Museum, Cologne; In Prague, Spala Prague; Fair, Royal College, London; An Artist who doesn’t speak English, Kunstihoone, Tallin; 2002: Pause for a Moment, Priestor, Bratislava; 2001: Ausgeträumt…, Wiener Secession, Vienna; Central, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen; Die Sammlung, MUMOK, Vienna; Slowakische Träume, Museum Moderner Kunst, Passau.