Press Release


Adrián Villar Rojas’ newly opened solo exhibition First Gods, Lost Animals takes over two floors of the Museum, evoking both the geological and mythological formation of a cave.






























 




















 





























International exhibitions

International ongoing exhibitions


Adrian Villar Rojas : First Gods, Lost Animals

Aspen Art Museum (United States)

02.07.2026- 11.04.2027

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In Villar Rojas’ approach, the cave functions as a space of double accumulation: geologically shaped through eons of material deposition and mineral consolidation, and culturally layered with human projections, rituals, and symbolic activity. Within this environmental transformation sits a new sculpture co-commissioned by the Aspen Art Museum and Audemars Piguet Contemporary, Untitled (from the series The Language of the Enemy), a life-size triceratops skull. The work imagines a prehistoric meeting between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals as a possible moment when the first gestures of meaning or image-making passed between species.

In this new work, Villar Rojas proposes a theoretical history that challenges prevailing anthropocentric narratives of human exceptionalism. While symbolic creation has long been framed as an invention of Homo sapiens, recent findings suggest that Neanderthals may have engaged in such practices before us. Here, the encounter becomes a site of transmission: what we consider the foundation of human culture may have been inherited from a now-vanished branch of the human lineage. In this view, the birth of art is not a triumph of our species but a gift from another. Adriá Villar Rojas: First Gods, Lost Animals is curated by Claude Adjil, Curator-at-Large.



Adrián Villar Rojas, First Gods, Lost Animals (detail), 2026. Installation view, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, Colorado, US, 2026. Courtesy of the artist, Aspen Art Museum, kurimanzutto and Marian Goodman Gallery. Photo: Jörg Baumann.

Adrián Villar Rojas, First Gods, Lost Animals (detail), 2026. Installation view, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, Colorado, US, 2026. Courtesy of the artist, Aspen Art Museum, kurimanzutto and Marian Goodman Gallery. Photo: Jörg Baumann.

Exhibition 02 July 2026 -11 April 2027. Aspen Art Museum, 637 E. Hyman Avenue - Aspen, Colorado 81611 (United States). Hours : Tuesday–unday, 10 AM– PM. Closed Mondays




























 





 











Adrian Villar Rojas : First Gods, Lost Animals, Aspen Art Museum (United States)

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