The Theater of Disappearance is a major site-specific installation by celebrated Argentinian artist Adrián Villar Rojas, commissioned and organized by NEON.

Villar Rojas is well known for his large-scale sculptural installations that interrupt the status quo of artistic practice and behaviour within a museum, a cultural heritage site, a rooftop or public space. Concerned with ideas of disappearance, extinction, the passage and volatility of time, Villar Rojas creates a new – and often disconcerting – visual language with unpredictable settings for the visitor to explore – places where we feel uncomfortable or are astounded by the alternative histories he suggests.

This commission sees Villar Rojas negotiating with an archaeological site for the first time as he radically alters both the indoor and outdoor space of the National Observatory so that the whole site undergoes a transformation – architectural, horticultural and emotional.

The Theater of Disappearance is an umbrella title covering four separate exhibitions of new, independent commissions taking place in 2017 across Europe and the US at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (April 14-October 29), Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (May 13-August 27), NEON, Athens, (June 1-September 24, 2017) and the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles (October 22-February 26, 2018).

Curator | Elina Kountouri, Director ΝΕΟΝ