Roman Ondak

• Tate Modern, London (UK)
• 09.05.–12.05.2025

Artist Roman Ondak invites you to take part in the collective performance Measuring the Universe. The artwork is based on a set of instructions by the artist and carried out by Tate facilitators.

You are invited to choose a location in the Turbine Hall to have your height measured, name marked and the date that you take part recorded. Over the four days of Tate Modern’s Birthday Weekender, the walls will gradually fill with individual markings and names, creating a collective drawing and an ephemeral performance.

Measuring the Universe expresses Ondak’s interest in merging art and everyday life and reflects on our experience of the passing of time. The artist comments: ‘The idea is taken from a habit of parents to measure children. I was thinking about this very peripheral and marginal moment of everyday life to be expanded and…transformed.’ In Measuring the Universe a private individual action is transformed into a public and collective action within the museum.

Slovak artist Roman Ondak is currently represented in Tate’s collection with two works. Good Feelings in Good Times 2003 – an artificially choreographed queue of people – was the first ever performance to be collected by Tate. Ondak’s installation It Will All Turn Out Right in the End 2005–06 is a scaled model of Tate’s Turbine Hall and was commissioned by Tate Modern as part of the Level 2 Gallery series, later entering Tate’s collection in 2019. Measuring the Universe 2007 was performed at Tate St Ives in 2011 and is a promised gift of the Rennie Collection, Vancouver, Canada (Tate Americas Foundation), 2010, to Tate.

Tate Modern