21 November 2019 until 16 August 2020

Adrian Villar Rojas: Poems for Earthlings

Oude Kerk presents: Adrián Villar Rojas - Poems for Earthlings

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Adrián Villar Rojas Poems for Earthlings Oude Kerk 2019 photo Jörg Baumann 73
Adrián Villar Rojas Poems for Earthlings Oude Kerk 2019 photo Jörg Baumann 68
Adrián Villar Rojas Poems for Earthlings Oude Kerk 2019 photo Jörg Baumann 61
Adrián Villar Rojas Poems for Earthlings Oude Kerk 2019 photo Jörg Baumann 45
Adrián Villar Rojas Poems for Earthlings Oude Kerk 2019 photo Jörg Baumann 65
Adrián Villar Rojas Poems for Earthlings Oude Kerk 2019 photo Jörg Baumann 51
Adrián Villar Rojas Poems for Earthlings Oude Kerk 2019 photo Jörg Baumann 36
Adrián Villar Rojas Poems for Earthlings Oude Kerk 2019 photo Jörg Baumann 60

This exhibition was made possible by the Mondriaan Fund, Fonds 21, the V Fonds and the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts.

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The Oude Kerk presents Poems for Earthlings, an extensive site-specific installation by the Argentine artist Adrián Villar Rojas (Rosario, 1980). This is the first solo exhibition by this world-famous artist in the Netherlands; the art installation was created after historical research and numerous visits to the Oude Kerk.

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Site-specifieke installations

Villar Rojas' approach is emphatically site-specific. At the beginning of each project, he immerses himself in the social, cultural, geographical and institutional environment in which he will work with a group of project collaborators. This peripatetic working method defines him as an itinerant artist. Through his travels and research, he developed a deep engagement with various places around the world. The installations he develops on site are temporary and ephemeral. The scant traces he leaves as an artist contrast with the unwritten rules that sustain the art world: the creation of a work of art, reproduction, marketing and transportation. In his work, Villar Rojas reveals his own temporality - at the risk of his own oblivion - and shows what is doomed to disappear, what cannot - and perhaps should not - be preserved.

About Adrían Villar Rojas

Adrián Villar Rojas was born in 1980 in Rosario, Argentina. Villar Rojas is best known for his large-scale, site-specific sculptural installations. In 2011, he represented Argentina at the Venice Biennale and in 2012 his work was shown at Documenta 13 in Kassel. In his work, there is often a sense of crumbling humanity; a futuristic culture that has disappeared. Villar Rojas' works combine the daunting scale of conventional public sculptures with an unstable fragility, reminding his viewers of the transience of even the most imposing structures.