Leo Villareal

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Leo Villareal (1967, Albuquerque, New Mexico) is an American artist living and working in New York City. His work combines LED lights and encoded computer programming to create illuminated displays.^[1]

[edit] Biography

Villareal received a BA in sculpture from Yale University in 1990 and a graduate degree from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP).

His work has been on display in Visual Music 1905-2005, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC and Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; All-Digital, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH; Greater New York 2005, PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY, Fiction: New Vision in Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, China and Art in America at Arario Gallery, Seoul, Korea. Recent exhibitions include: Gering & López Gallery, New York, NY, and That Was Then, This is Now, P.S.1/MoMA, New York, NY. Villareal also has permanent installations at the Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, Perry Capital, New York, NY, and Related Companies, Columbus Circle, NY. Villareal's work can also be found in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York.^[2]

Villareal believes that art and computer programming can be seamlessly integrated, a signature element of his work. He introduces a human element into a field that is sometimes seen as robotic and anonymous. Consisting of thousands of LED lights, his pieces take on unique personalities through variations in form, scale and rhythm. While individual components appear to have minds of their own, there is an overall cohesion to each piece. Villareal's code utilizes its own set of rules, creating autonomous agents within a matrix. The result is a seductive, pulsating plane of ever-changing color that envelopes the viewer into an environment of hypnotic, visual movement.