Unknown

Leo Villareal

Interstellar

Past
Mar 17 – Apr 29, 2023
New York
 
Exhibition Details:

Leo Villareal
Interstellar
Mar 17 – Apr 29, 2023

Gallery:

540 West 25th Street
New York

Press:

Press Release

Connect:

(opens in a new window) @leo_villareal
(opens in a new window) @pacegallery

Above: Leo Villareal, 2022 © Leo Villareal

Pace is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Leo Villareal at its 540 West 25th Street gallery in New York.

On view from March 17 to April 29, the show will feature 15 new sculptures in which Villareal employs LEDs and custom software to investigate space, time, and perception. Titled Interstellar, this exhibition will mark the artist’s first presentation in New York since 2017 and his seventh show with the gallery since joining its program.

Villareal’s practice is part of a lineage of artistic engagement that explores the connections between nature, technology, and human experience. The artist’s upcoming exhibition with Pace in New York will feature wall-based sculptures, including works from his new Nebulae series. Emitting hypnotic, diffused light, the Nebulae sculptures are informed by celestial imagery and evoke the dynamism of space through interplays of color and shape. Villareal creates unique and specific sequencing for each artwork through code that is generative and visceral, like nature itself. As such, no two sculptures are the same.

This presentation at Pace in New York will also include works realized at a scale that Villareal hasn’t explored in nearly a decade: two-foot square wall-mounted sculptures. These intimately scaled artworks, paired with their glass enclosures, encourage focused readings of Villareal’s abstractions. Like his larger works, the two-foot pieces invite viewers to consider the boundary separating physical and digital worlds.

Villareal harnesses the power of light, size, and site specificity for large-scale public projects, including The Bay Lights, a public art installation spanning 1.8 miles of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, and Illuminated River, a vibrant, long- term installation on view across nine bridges along the Thames in London. His most recent large-scale public artwork, Fountain (KCI), was completed in February 2023 and celebrates Kansas City’s legacy as The City of Fountains.

In addition to his museum, gallery, and public art projects, Villareal debuted his first NFT series, titled Cosmic Reef, on the leading generative art platform Art Blocks in January 2022. Created using a combination of human control and computational chance, the works in this series feature mesmeric, evolving geometries. Continuing his explorations in web3, Villareal released Cosmic Bloom in December 2022 with Outland, a platform focused on the meeting of digital technologies and contemporary art. Cosmic Bloom is a continuation of the artist’s Cosmologies series, which began with Cosmic Reef and draws inspiration from organic and biological structures, stellar phenomena, and atomic patterns.

 

Featured Works

Leo Villareal, Spectral Nebula, 2023, LEDs, acrylic, aluminum, electronics, custom software, 60" × 48" × 3" (152.4 cm × 121.9 cm × 7.6 cm)
Leo Villareal, Sol Nebula, 2023, LEDs, acrylic, aluminum, electronics, custom software, 60" × 48" × 3" (152.4 cm × 121.9 cm × 7.6 cm)
Leo Villareal, Eclipse Nebula, 2023, LEDs, acrylic, aluminum, electronics, custom software, 48" × 36" × 3" (121.9 cm × 91.4 cm × 7.6 cm)
Leo Villareal, Orb Nebula, 2023, LEDs, acrylic, aluminum, electronics, custom software, 48" × 36" × 3" (121.9 cm × 91.4 cm × 7.6 cm)
Leo Villareal, Azure Nebula, 2023, LEDs, acrylic, aluminum, electronics, custom software, 48" × 36" × 3" (121.9 cm × 91.4 cm × 7.6 cm)
Leo Villareal, Turquoise Nebula, 2023, LEDs, acrylic, aluminum, electronics, custom software, 60" × 48" × 3" (152.4 cm × 121.9 cm × 7.6 cm)
 

Installation Views

 
Villareal.jpg

About the Artist

Leo Villareal works with pixels and binary code to create complex, rhythmic compositions in light. Firmly rooted in abstraction, his approach uses layered sequencing that results in open-ended and subjective visual experiences. Villareal’s works often reference organic systems and evoke—but do not illustrate—atmospheric elements in that emergent and unexpected behavior occurs without a predetermined outcome.

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