{"id":14151,"date":"2025-09-06T13:30:47","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T06:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cstc.vn\/blogtsk\/adrian-villar-rojas-transforms-seouls-art-sonje-center-into-a-decomposing-ecosystem\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T13:30:47","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T06:30:47","slug":"adrian-villar-rojas-transforms-seouls-art-sonje-center-into-a-decomposing-ecosystem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cstc.vn\/blogtsk\/adrian-villar-rojas-transforms-seouls-art-sonje-center-into-a-decomposing-ecosystem\/","title":{"rendered":"adri\u00e1n villar rojas transforms seoul\u2019s art sonje center into a decomposing ecosystem"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"wow wow-yellow\">Adri\u00e1n Villar Rojas\u2019s exhibition takes over Art Sonje Center<\/h2>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Language of the Enemy marks <a href=\"https:\/\/www.designboom.com\/tag\/adrian-villar-rojas\/\"><strong>Adri\u00e1n Villar Rojas\u2019s<\/strong><\/a> first solo <a href=\"https:\/\/www.designboom.com\/tag\/exhibitions\/\"><strong>exhibition<\/strong><\/a> in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.designboom.com\/tag\/korean-art\/\"><strong>Korea<\/strong><\/a> and the first time in the institution\u2019s history that a single project overtakes all four floors of Seoul\u2019s Art Sonje Center, including corridors, stairwells, restrooms, and peripheral spaces.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>To achieve this transformation, Villar Rojas dismantles the building\u2019s internal systems. Temporary partitions are removed, surfaces stripped back to their structural core, and even the climate controls are abandoned to expose the architecture to external forces of heat, humidity, and air. Soil and vegetation breach the interior, fire is introduced as both material and process, and exit signs glow as ambient lighting. Visitors enter through a mound of earth, stepping into a space where the categories of inside and outside, ecological and institutional, begin to collapse.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>At the heart of the exhibition that runs until February 1st, 2026, lies the ongoing series The End of Imagination (2022\u2013ongoing), whose chimerical <a href=\"https:\/\/www.designboom.com\/tag\/sculpture\/\"><strong>sculptures<\/strong><\/a> appear like artifacts excavated from a future that has already forgotten us. The works are generated through Villar Rojas\u2019s bespoke Time Engine, a digital simulation that merges video game technologies, artificial intelligence, and speculative world-building. From this tool, evolving synthetic ecologies emerge, populated by shifting life forms, architectures, and sociopolitical landscapes. Between 2021 and 2024, the artist and his longtime team began \u2018downloading\u2019 these digital beings and painstakingly reconstituting them as physical sculptures.<\/p>\n<p>all images by Seowon Nam<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wow wow-yellow\">sculptures at the Threshold of Human and Machine<\/h2>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Fabricated in a temporary workshop in Rosario, Argentina, the works are layered composites of organic and inorganic matter made of concrete, salt, resin, glass, soil, auto parts, tree bark, and industrial debris. Each surface retains traces of its digital origin and the collective human and machinic labor that shaped it. Argentine-Peruvian artist Villar Rojas describes this reversal of authorship.<em> \u2018I model worlds, and the worlds model \u201dsculptures\u201d for me,\u2019<\/em> <strong>he explains.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The exhibition title points to deeper evolutionary entanglements. Reflecting on The Language of the Enemy, Villar Rojas situates symbolic thought not as an exclusively human invention but as a shared inheritance forged in encounters with other hominin species, Neanderthals, and Denisovans, at once hostile and intimate. Today, he suggests, we face a similar threshold with synthetic intelligences whose <em>\u2018languages we barely comprehend.\u2019<\/em> The project stages this encounter within Seoul\u2019s Art Sonje Center itself, recasting the institution as a laboratory and ruin.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The ambitious transformation of the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/artsonje.org\/en\/\">venue<\/a><\/strong> was realized on-site over six weeks by a group of eleven collaborators, many of whom have worked with Villar Rojas since 2009. Operating like a hive mind or terraforming crew, they constructed the exhibition as a handmade ecosystem. The project also resonates historically, commemorating the inaugural exhibition held three decades ago in the same building that marked Art Sonje Center\u2019s establishment as a key space for contemporary art in Seoul.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>The Language of the Enemy marks Adri\u00e1n Villar Rojas\u2019s first solo exhibition in Korea<\/p>\n<p>the project overtakes all four floors of Seoul\u2019s Art Sonje Center<\/p>\n<p>Villar Rojas dismantles the building\u2019s internal systems<\/p>\n<p>the climate controls are abandoned to expose the architecture to external forces of heat, humidity, and air<\/p>\n<p>at the heart of the exhibition lies the ongoing series The End of Imagination<\/p>\n<p>soil and vegetation breach the interior<\/p>\n<p>visitors enter through a mound of earth<\/p>\n<p>\t<!-- CLOSE ARTICLE CONTENT --><\/p>\n<div class=\"fullwidth-image\">\n<div class=\"layout-box\">\n<div class=\"page-content\">\n<p>chimerical sculptures appear like artifacts excavated from a future that has already forgotten us<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p>\t<!-- OPEN ARTICLE CONTENT -->\t<\/p>\n<p>the works are generated through Villar Rojas\u2019s bespoke Time Engine<\/p>\n<p>the works are layered composites of organic and inorganic matter<\/p>\n<p>\t<!-- CLOSE ARTICLE CONTENT --><\/p>\n<div class=\"fullwidth-image\">\n<div class=\"layout-box\">\n<div class=\"page-content\">\n<p>each surface retains traces of its digital origin and the collective labor<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p>\t<!-- OPEN ARTICLE CONTENT -->\t<\/p>\n<p>evolving synthetic ecologies emerge<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>project info:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>name:<\/strong> The Language of the Enemy<\/p>\n<p><strong>artist:<\/strong> Adri\u00e1n Villar Rojas<\/p>\n<p><strong>location:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/artsonje.org\/en\/\">Art Sonje Center<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/artsonje_cente\">@artsonje_cente<\/a>, Seoul, Korea<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>dates:<\/strong> September 3rd, 2025 \u2013 February 1st, 2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>curators:<\/strong> Sunjung Kim (Artistic Director, Art Sonje Center), Heehyun Cho (Head of Exhibitions, Art Sonje Center)<\/p>\n<p><strong>coordinator:<\/strong> Seowon Nam (Curatorial Assistant, Art Sonje Center)<\/p>\n<p><strong>organized by:<\/strong> Art Sonje Center<\/p>\n<p><strong>supported by:<\/strong> Arts Council Korea<\/p>\n<p><strong>sponsored by:<\/strong> Marian Goodman Gallery, Kurimanzutto<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.designboom.com\/art\/adrian-villar-rojas-seoul-art-sonje-center-decomposing-ecosystem-language-enemy-09-06-2025\/\">adri\u00e1n villar rojas transforms seoul\u2019s art sonje center into a decomposing ecosystem<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.designboom.com\/\">designboom | architecture &amp; design magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Adri\u00e1n Villar Rojas\u2019s exhibition takes over Art Sonje Center \u00a0 The Language of the Enemy marks Adri\u00e1n Villar Rojas\u2019s first solo exhibition in Korea and the first time in the institution\u2019s history that a single &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[142],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v16.7 - 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