artnexus #91

Adrián Villar Rojas (1980, Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina) is characterized by works of oversized dimensions, as monumental as the issues they engage. The origin of the universe, loaded with primeval creatures who speak to us of apocalypse, transmutations, death, spaces of a world that harks back to a thoroughly distant past that is nevertheless inhabited by machines and complex devices seemingly allusive to future civilizations, expressed as the ruins of a world yet to come. The theory of parallel universes where alternative worlds coexist with ours generates complex visual speculations traversed by heterogeneity of cultural referents. Science fiction and natural world intertwine to engender anachronistic visions in the construction of those parallel worlds. The materials with which the artist works, such as brick, clay, and clay dust, are for him not only elements that contain time but possess a ductility that makes it possible to create the most diverse shapes. Villar Rojas’ site-specific installations reinforce his interest in the way in which the remains of man-made culture will be reprocessed, and with those materials, he builds figures and forms at the scale we usually associate with monuments. And, as the artist said in reference to his work for the 2011 Venice Biennial, “I build monuments because I am not ready to lose anything.” But his is a fleeting monumentality. The material he uses to create it results, as with many of the animals and architectures represented there, in their disappearance. At 33, Villar Rojas’ many exhibitions—presented in such emblematic sites as MoMA PS1, the Serpentine Sacker Gallery and Documenta 13—propose a way of seeing that questions our everyday perception of the world and his monumental universes project other meanings of the notion of temporality. 
IVONNE PINI