LEO VILLAREAL

Villareal’s use of colour in these sculptures can be understood in dialogue with his vibrant, long-term Illuminated River installation, which spans nine Thames bridges in London. With that expansive project, Villareal engages with the rich history of studies of the Thames by artists including Claude Monet and André Derain. For this project, the artist created subtly moving sequences of LED light that reveal the beauty of the existing architectures and their relationships to the river flowing beneath them. 

Among the artist’s other recent projects was the debut of his first series of NFTs, titled Cosmic Reef, on the Art Blocks platform in January. Created using a combination of human control and computational chance, the works in this series feature mesmeric, evolving geometries. A group of these unique, generative works, which are informed by beauty and randomness in nature, will figure in Pace’s Palm Beach exhibition.

Villareal’s presence in Florida can be traced to the permanent display of his light installation Sky (Tampa) (2010) on the south façade of the Tampa Museum of Art and his inclusion in a 2011 group exhibition at the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach. His work is also part of the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; the Long Museum, Shanghai; and other international institutions.