First Gods, Lost Animals
The exhibition "First Gods, Lost Animals" imagines cave-like forms generated both by slow naturally occuring processes and by human stories, arguing that humans use symbols (myth, art, math, and now AI) to make the complexities of our modern world understandable. The suite of work suggests through the various suspended forms, a life-size triceratops skull sculpture, and graphic light boxs, that symbolic culture may not be uniquely human in origin.
Adrián Villar Rojas (born 1980, Rosario, Argentina) is a contemporary sculptor and installation artist known for large-scale, immersive environments that blend theater, archaeology, and speculative history.
Working across sculpture, installation, video, and performance, he often stages imagined futures and lost pasts using cast, found, and fabricated objects that look both ancient and futuristic. His studio treats exhibitions as temporary ecosystems; complex sets where materials age, erode, or are staged to suggest geological and cultural time. Villar Rojas’ work explores themes of extinction, myth-making, human hubris, and the limits of historical narratives.
(36) individual 3’x4’x8’ EPS blocks
(19,500) 5-axis CNC programs
(800) unique milled parts
EPS foam, steel armature, resin, pigmented sand, crystals, bone fragments
Johnson Atelier is the Commissioning Partner of Adrián Villar Rojas: "First Gods, Lost Animals".
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