Adrian Villar Rojas Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1980 -

Adrián Villar Rojas’ artistic production exists in an imaginary dimension where men face their obsolescence and eventual extinction, playing with perceptions of time and its representation in human culture. Villar Rojas uses aspects of drawing, sculpture, music, science fiction and installation to create dream-like alternate realities that allude to an apocalyptic or mythological end of the world. Often working in clay, his installations are colossal and immersive, provoking sensations of unease for their embodiment of both physical and temporal immensity; the objects he creates seem at once timeless and ancient, relics from an ambiguous future or past that question our notions of time, history, and modernity. Villar Rojas provocatively merges reality and illusion to produce situations of overwhelming strangeness that test the limits of the imagination. However, the use of clay and elements from the natural world offer an opportunity to re-connect with the basic humanity of the material on a more modest scale. The process of creation is often mimicked in the work itself, resulting in objects that embrace all things realized and unrealized, imagined and performed, possible and impossible.



Adrián Villar Rojas has been the recipient of numerous awards including The Zurich Art Prize at the Museum Haus Konstruktiv (2013), and the 9th Benesse Prize in the 54th Venice Biennial (2011). He has participated in various residences: SAM Art Projects, Paris, France (2011); Banff Centre Institute, Alberta, Canada (2010); La Residencia, Bogotá, Colombia (2010); and at the Panorama Brasileiras das Artes, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2009).


His most important exhibitions include: Adrián Villar Rojas – Fantasma, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2015); The Evolution of God, High Line at the Rail Yards, New York United States (2014); Adrián Villar Rojas – Films Before Revolution, Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zürich, Switzerland (2013); Today We Reboot the Planet, Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2013); Adrián Villar Rojas: La inocencia de los animales, Expo 1, MoMA PS1, New York, United States (2013); Return the world, dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel Germany (2012); Before my birth, Arts Brookfield with The New Museum triennial “The Ungovernables” and World Financial Center Plaza New York, USA (2012); El asesino de tu herencia (The Murderer of Your Heritage), 54th Venice Biennial, Argentinian pavilion, Venice, Italy (2011); Poems for Earthlings, SAM ART Projects, Jardin des Tuileries, Musée du Louvre Paris, France (2011). Moreover, his work has been included in group exhibitions at institutions such as The New Museum, New York, United States (2012); Serpentine Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2010); Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany (2010); CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, United States (2009); Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo, Brazil (2009) among others.



He has participated in various biennials, including: the Sharjah Biennial 12, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2015); Bienal de la Habana, Havana, Cuba (2015); the 12th and 14th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey (2011-2015); the 5th Moscow Biennial, Moscow, Russia (2013); the Shanghai Biennial, China (2012).