Leo Villareal

Golden Game

On View
Sep 5 – Oct 18, 2025
Tokyo

Pace is pleased to present Golden Game, an exhibition featuring Leo Villareal’s latest body of work, at its Tokyo gallery. On view from September 5 to October 18, Golden Game will be the Mexican American artist’s debut solo show in Japan.

The exhibition follows the unveiling of Villareal’s first public artwork in Japan, Firmament (Mori) (2023), a luminous, cosmic artwork gracing the entrance to the Toranomon Hills Station Tower in Tokyo. Villareal’s presentation at Pace Tokyo will showcase his exploration of the relationships among nature, technology, chance, and the human experience, and it will invite viewers to consider the boundary between the physical and digital worlds.

In his exhibition with Pace in Tokyo, Villareal will present his newest series of wall-mounted sculptures—rendered at several different scales—which highlight wood as a key material. Using white oak for the first time, Villareal investigates new visual terrain with this body of work. In this way, his latest series of sculptures, entitled Golden Game, nods to the historical and cultural resonances of wood in Japan. Incorporating LEDs and custom software, these artworks also encourage focused, meditative readings of abstractions that reflect the power and mystery of the natural world.

Golden Game coincides with multiple major projects by the artist this year. In January, Villareal unveiled a new site- specific installation Star Ceiling (El Paso) at the El Paso Museum of Art in Texas. His expansive new monograph, Leo Villareal: Coding Light, from Phaidon is set to release this fall on November 12. And from 2026, The Bay Lights, a new iteration of his celebrated public artwork spanning 1.8 miles of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, will be illuminated for another ten years.

Rooted in the art historical language of abstraction, Villareal’s practice uses pixels and binary code to create complex, rhythmic compositions. Investigating the capacity of light and code as both medium and subject, Villareal’s work is concerned with the immersive, experiential, and sensorial qualities of perception. He has realized numerous large-scale public projects internationally, including Illuminated River, a vibrant, long-term installation on view across nine bridges along the Thames in London and Hive (Bleeker Street), a light sculpture in the shape of a honeycomb at the transfer point between the Bleecker Street and Broadway-Lafayette Street subway stations in New York. His public installation at Tokyo’s Toranomon Hills Station Tower, Firmament (Mori), was commissioned by Mori Building Co. and features sequenced patterns of light inspired by the movement of people, traffic, and weather in the area.

Villareal’s work can be found in major institutions around the world, including the Benesse Art Site in Naoshima, Japan; the Amorepacific Museum of Art in Seoul; the Long Museum in Shanghai; the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum in New York; the National Gallery of Art and Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.; and MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, among many others.

Golden Game will run concurrently with a presentation of work by the French modernist Sonia Delaunay at Pace Tokyo, drawing connections between both artists’ use of abstraction to explore perception, pattern, rhythm, and illusionistic optical effects.

Pace Playlists

Golden Game

This playlist offers a journey through tranquil electronic soundscapes, an exploration of ambient and downtempo electronic music, selected by Leo Villareal to enhance a sonic journey through the six artworks in his exhibition Golden Game at Pace Tokyo. Villareal is interested in the idea of synesthesia and remapping of the senses. Drawing inspiration from diverse musical artists, this playlist blends shimmering textures, gentle rhythms, and evocative soundscapes to create an immersive listening experience.

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About the Artist

Leo Villareal creates complex works of art with LED lights, using custom programming to constantly change their frequency, intensity, and patterning. Ranging from wall-mounted pieces and room-sized installations to public projects the scale of buildings and bridges, Villareal’s light-based works prompt reconsideration of light, space, and technology. Often inspired by natural phenomena, they evoke—but do not illustrate—elemental and atmospheric systems with emergent behavior that occurs without a predetermined outcome. Firmly rooted in abstraction, Villareal’s approach uses layered sequencing to develop his light sculptures, resulting in open-ended, immersive experiences for viewers.

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