Post-extinction mythologies in unstable matter – Adrián Villar Rojas
Monumental yet perishable, these sculptural ecosystems operate as speculative ruins—temporal installations that reject permanence and resist commodification through the use of fragile, degradable matter. Neither fully ancient nor futuristic, their forms—bison, engines, relics, organic residues—propose a collapsed temporality, dissolving distinctions between archaeology and prophecy. The works arise from context-specific residencies, where collective labour and embedded research yield sculptural fictions charged with entropy, estrangement and ecological unease. Decay is not failure but premise, a formal and political decision that dismantles the mythology of the eternal art object, refusing to serve institutional systems of conservation or capital circulation. What remains are unstable monuments, staging a posthuman dramaturgy of species, materials and technologies in mutation.
Monumental yet perishable, these sculptural ecosystems operate as speculative ruins—temporal installations that reject permanence and resist commodification through the use of fragile, degradable matter. Neither fully ancient nor futuristic, their forms—bison, engines, relics, organic residues—propose a collapsed temporality, dissolving distinctions between archaeology and prophecy. The works arise from context-specific residencies, where collective labour and embedded research yield sculptural fictions charged with entropy, estrangement and ecological unease. Decay is not failure but premise, a formal and political decision that dismantles the mythology of the eternal art object, refusing to serve institutional systems of conservation or capital circulation. What remains are unstable monuments, staging a posthuman dramaturgy of species, materials and technologies in mutation.
