Pace Gallery is delighted to announce Leo Villareal: Nebulae, the American artist's first solo exhibition in Switzerland.Bringing together a suite of eight new wall-based digital sculptures, this presentation will coincide with the 2023 edition of artgenève, where the artist will showcase a major installation in the main hall. Nebulae marks Pace's sixth solo exhibition of Villareal's work, underscoring the gallery's commitment to championing contemporary practices that push the boundaries of art and technology.
Rooted in 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 practice is concerned with the immersive, experiential, and sensorial qualities of perception. Villareal's major projects include his public installation The Bay Lights (2013) on the Bay Bridge in San Francisco and the long-term project Illuminated River, in which nine bridges along the River Thames in London are lit up every evening. Villareal has constructed a generative sequence of subtly shifting LED lights that bring attention to the relationships between architecture and nature, responding to the natural fluctuations of the currents and sky.
Villareal's latest body of work, titled Nebulae, brings this language of brightly coloured LED lights, electronics, and custom coding into the gallery space. These new wall-based sculptures are comprised of hypnotic, diffused light that pulsates in vibrant hues of radiant colours. Drawing simultaneously on organic, celestial imagery and the visual lexicon of custom software, Villareal's work bridges the divide, inviting viewers to engage with the boundary that separates the physical and digital worlds.
Leo Villareal (b. 1967, Albuquerque, New Mexico) works with LED lights to create complex, rhythmic artworks for both gallery and public settings. He focuses on identifying the governing structures of systems, and is interested in base units such as pixels and binary code. His installations use custom, artist-created code, which constantly changes the frequency, intensity, and patterning of lights through sequencing. Villareal has created temporary and permanent lightworks and sculptures for public spaces and museums including the Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C; and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Villareal's winning submission for the 2016 Illuminated River International Design Competition, will use light and colour in an integrated composition to enliven the bridges of the River Thames in London.
Pace is a leading international art gallery representing some of the most influential contemporary artists and estates from the past century, holding decades-long relationships with Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Barbara Hepworth, Agnes Martin, Louise Nevelson, and Mark Rothko. Pace enjoys a unique U.S. heritage spanning East and West coasts through its early support of artists central to the Abstract Expressionist and Light and Space movements.
