ARTIST STATEMENT

Leo Villareal's work is focused on stripping systems down to their essence to better understand the underlying structures and rules that govern how they work. He is interested in lowest common denominators such as pixels or the zeros and ones in binary code. Starting at the beginning, using the simplest forms, Villareal begins to build elements within a framework. The work explores not only the physical but adds the dimension of time combining both spatial and temporal resolution. The resulting forms move, change, interact and ultimately grow into complex organisms that are inspired by mathematician John Conway's work with cellular automata and the Game of Life. 

Villareal seeks to create his own sets of rules and central to his work is the element of chance. The artist's goal is to create a rich environment in which emergent behavior can occur without a preconceived outcome. He is an active participant in the process through the careful selection of compelling sequences. These selections are then further refined and layered through simple operations such as addition, subtraction and multiplication. 

Parameters like opacity, speed and scale are also manipulated through the artist's custom software, creating compositions that are displayed in random order and for a random amount of time. Ultimately, the visual manifestation of code in light is at the core of Villareal's interest.

BIOGRAPHY

Leo Villareal is a Mexican American light artist based in New York City. Over the last 20 years, he has exhibited widely in the United States and abroad. His work is in the permanent collections of museums including The Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum, Kagawa, Japan; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. In addition to being represented by Pace Gallery, Villareal also creates permanent, site-specific works including: Star Ceiling (El Paso), El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX; Firmament (Mori), Toranomon Hills Station Tower, Tokyo, Japan; Infinite Composition, Lindemann Performing Arts Center, Brown University, Providence, RI; Fountain (KCI), Kansas City International Airport, Kansas City, Missouri; Light Matrix (Houston), Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine, University of Houston, Houston, Texas; Volume (Frisco), Dallas Cowboys World Headquarters, Frisco, Texas; Buckyball, Exploratorium, San Francisco, California; Light Matrix (MIT), Morris and Sophie Chang Building, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA; Volume (Renwick), Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian American Museum of Art, Washington, D.C.; Radiant Pathway, Rice University, Houston, Texas; Cosmos, Johnson Museum, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Multiverse, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Diagonal Grid, Borusan Music House, Borusan Arts, Istanbul, Turkey; Stars, Light Matrix (BAM,) and Volume (BAM), Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY; and Hive (Bleecker Street), for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority at the Bleecker Street subway station in Manhattan. In March 2013, Villareal inaugurated The Bay Lights, a monumental 1.8-mile installation of 25,000 white LED lights on San Francisco's Bay Bridge. In April 2021, Villareal completed Illuminated River, which unites 9 bridges in central London into a single, monumental work of public art.

Villareal was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico and grew up in El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Chihuahua. He attended Portsmouth Abbey School in Portsmouth, Rhode Island and received his BA in sculpture from Yale University in 1990 and his master's degree in Interactive Telecommunications from New York University in 1994. After graduating from NYU, Villareal moved to San Francisco to work for three years at Paul Allen's private research lab, Interval Research, in Palo Alto. Since 2004, Villareal has served on the board of Ballroom Marfa in Marfa, Texas, a dynamic, contemporary cultural arts space. In 2011, Villareal proudly joined the board of the Burning Man Project. He currently lives in downtown Manhattan with his wife Yvonne Force Villareal and their two children.

ARTIST CV

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Education

1994 New York University, M.P.S. Tisch School of the Arts, Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP)

1990 Yale University, B.A.

Solo Exhibitions

2024

Interstellar, Figge Art Museum

2023

Celestial Garden, Guild Hall, East Hampton, New York

Interstellar, Pace Gallery, New York

Nebulae, Pace Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland

2022

Nebulae, Pace Gallery, Palm Beach, FL

2020

Harmony of the Spheres, Pace Gallery, Palo Alto, CA

Leo Villareal, Pace Gallery, London, UK

2019

Instance, The Armory Show, New York, NY

2018

Escape Velocity, Pace Gallery, Hong Kong

2017

Leo Villareal, Pace Gallery, New York, NY

Particle Chamber, Moody Center for The Arts, Rice University, Houston TX

2016

Spacetime, Fused Space, San Francisco, CA

2014

Buckyball, Sandra Gering Gallery, New York, NY

2013

Digital Sublime, Miles C. Horton Jr. Gallery, Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA

2012

New Works, Conner Contemporary Art, Washington, DC

2011

Volume, Gering & López Gallery, New York, NY

2010

Leo Villareal: Survey, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA, traveling to the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV, Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, GA, and Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, WI

Leo Villareal: Recent Works, Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL

San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA

2009

Galeria Javier Lopez, Madrid, Spain

2008

National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Conner Contemporary Art, Washington, DC

2007

Gering and Lopez Gallery, New York, NY

2006

Conner Contemporary Art, Washington, DC 

2005

Galeria Javier Lopez, Madrid, Spain

Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA 

2004

Sandra Gering Gallery, NY

Conner Contemporary Art, Washington, DC 

2003

Finesilver Gallery, San Antonio, TX 

2002

Sandra Gering Gallery, NY

Conner Contemporary Art, Washington, DC 

Group Exhibitions and Projects

2023

Think Pinker, Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2022

Drawing Together, Museum Bellpark, Kriens, Switzerland

2021

Remote Possibilities: Digital Landscapes from the Thoma Foundation Collection, Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, New Mexico

2020

Immaterial/Re-material, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China

2019

Kabbalah: The Art of Jewish Mysticism, Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

2018

Blessed Be: Spirituality, Mysticism, and the Occult in Contemporary Art, MOCA Tucson, Tucson, Arizona

2016

Into the Ether: Contemporary Light Artists, The Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH

2013-16

Light Show, Hayward Gallery, London, UK. Traveling to: Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, Australia; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

2015

Systems and Corruptions, National Exemplar, New York, NY

Wonder, Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

2014

The International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Cartagena de Indias, Cartagena, Colombia

Tracking the Cosmos, Simons Center Gallery, Stony Brook University, NY
Luminous Flux, Digital & Geometric Art from the Thoma Foundation, Thoma Foundation, Santa Fe, NM

Spaced Out: Migration to the Interior, Curated by Phong Bui, Red Bull Studios, New York, NY

2012

Extended Minimalism, Javier Lopez Gallery, Madrid, Spain

Motion and Emotion: Contemporary Art from Gerhard Richter to Chakaia Booker, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME

Inquisitive Eyes: El Paso Art 1960-2012, El Paso Art Museum of Art, El Paso, TX

2011

Longitudes de Onda, Espacio de Arte OTR., Madrid, Spain

Red (Force Fields), David Richard Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM

January White Sale, curated by Beth Rudin DeWoody, Loretta Howard Gallery, New York, NY

Altered States: Jose Alvarez, Yayoi Kusama, Fred Tomaselli and Leo Villareal, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL

Almost Tangible, Arario Gallery, Beijing, China

2010

Synesthesia, Albuquerque Museum of Art, Albuquerque, NM

Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY

2009

Conversations in Lyrical Abstraction: 1958-2009, Conner Contemporary Art, Washington, DC

2008

That Was Then... This is Now, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY

2007

Digital Stories, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (CGAC), Santiago, Spain

2006

Lightworks, Galería Javier López, Madrid, Spain

Backdrop, Bloomberg SPACE, London, England

All Digital, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH

Summer Light, Sandra Gering Gallery, New York, NY

Art in America, Arario Gallery, Seoul, Korea

2005

Visual Music, LAMoca, Los Angeles and Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC

Extreme Abstraction, Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY

Greater New York, PS1 Moma, New York, NY

2004

Optimo, Ballroom, Marfa, Texas curated by Alexander Gray

Fiction Love- Ultra New Visions in Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei

2003

High Desert Test Sites, Joshua Tree, CA organized by Andrea Zittel

Winter Light, Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY

In the Gloaming, The Fields Sculpture Park, Ghent, NY

Afterimage, Wood Street Galleries, Pittsburgh, PA

Complexity, Federal Reserve, Washington, DC

2002

Sculpture Now, Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Palm Beach, FL

Light x 8, The Jewish Museum, NY

Interstate, Texas Fine Arts Association, Austin, TX

I Just Can't Pretend, Derek Eller Gallery, NY

Optical Optimism, Galerie Simone Stern, New Orleans, LA

Complexity, Texas Fine Arts Association, Austin, TX

Shine02.org, Online art project sponsored by Amnesty International, organized by Downtown Arts Projects

2001

Tirana Biennale, Tirana (curated by Miltos Manetas)

Eye Candy, Scott White Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA

Synth, organized by Leo Villareal, White Columns, New York

The Next Perfect 10, Sandra Gering Gallery, New York (traveling)

Perfect 10: Ten Years in Soho, Sandra Gering Gallery, New York

2000

rooms_for_listening, CCAC Institute, San Francisco, CA

Collectors Choice, Exit Art, New York

City of Lights, curated by Simon Watson and Downtown Arts Projects, Hermes Boutique, New York

Exposure: The Future of Film Festival, USA Network and Scfi Channel, New York

Optical Optimism, Galerie Simone Stern, New Orleans, LA

The Bunker Project, MTV, New York

1997

Elsewhere, Thread Waxing Space, New York

Select Awards/Honors

Illuminated River, Civic Trust Award 2021

City of London, Freedom of the City of London, 2020.

Illuminated River, Planning Resource, Award for best use of arts, culture or sport in placemaking, 2020. 

Illuminated River, BCIA Awards 2020 – Best Small Project

Illuminated River, New London Architecture Award 2019 – Cultural category

San Jose Museum of Art, Artist Honoree, 2019.

Illuminated River, New London Architectural Award for Culture, 2019.

Texas Cultural Trust, Texas Medal of the Arts Honoree for Visual Art, 2017.