The starting point for Villar Rojas’sThe End of Imagination, came four years ago when the artist first descended a manhole ladder into the fuel bunker that had lain disused for decades. Inside was an underground space,its concrete cap held up by 125 columns,rising seven metres high.
Villar Rojas says he immediately sensed the power and potential of the underground realm of the oil tank,describing it as portal to human stories of conflict. He notes that exhibition spaces such as the Louvre in Paris,or the Arsenale in Venice,are similarly bound up with histories of conflict,conquest and revolution.
“I love that visitors are entering a space that has long been a secret,and it’s important that visitors get to discover this space as their own secret too,without knowing too much in advance,” Rojas says.