Roman Ondak Crossword (Sunrise), 2025

Crossword (Sunrise), 2025, takes us into Roman Ondak's personal and political history. The first in a new series, it combines an archival image which Ondak reprinted and on which he then painted a crossword puzzle in light blue paint. The photo depicts a quarry. It is from the archives of a company in which the artist's father once worked. The found crossword puzzle from the post-World War II era includes imagery of socialist propaganda. Crossword I becomes a historical palimpsest, interweaving the artist’s family's and his home country's life. Characteristic of Ondak’s general practice, the work has a slow burn: the enigmatic combination of the industrial site with a harmless pleasure of doing crossword puzzles invaded by propaganda affects us even before the multi-layered associations are unpacked.