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Space, sound and light: Leo Villareal works with pixels and binary code to create complex, rhythmic compositions
It all started at Burning Man.
Leo Villareal was tired of trying to find his campsite in the Nevada black night desert, so he fashioned a torch using 16 strobe lights.
He realized he had created a sculpture.
Today, the Albuquerque-born Villareal is an internationally-renowned artist who works with pixels and binary code to create complex, rhythmic compositions in light.
His latest piece 鈥淎stral Array鈥 sprawls across the ceiling of the breezeway at the New Mexico Museum of Art Vladem Contemporary in Santa Fe, with 2,597, one-inch lights spanning 35 by 38 feet.
It pulsates, spirals and streams in a sparkling orchestra of the cosmos.
鈥淥bviously, the work is about time,鈥 Villareal said in a telephone interview from New York. 鈥淚t鈥檚 moving constantly and changing. It鈥檚 abstract patterns, almost like visual music.鈥
The artist grew up first in Ju谩rez, Mexico, then in El Paso, the son of a successful businessman who collected art.
鈥淚 think I was always really creative and curious,鈥 he said. 鈥淚 was basically tearing things apart. I somehow thought I could install a telephone in my parents鈥 bedroom in Ruidoso. Every time they used the phone, the alarm would ring.鈥
He didn鈥檛 realize he wanted to become an artist until he went to Yale University, where a sculpture class encouraged him to create using space, sound and light.
Space, sound and light: Leo Villareal works with pixels and binary code to create complex, rhythmic compositions
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鈥淚 thought it would be interesting to add computation,鈥 he said. 鈥淚 realized I could take people on these journeys using light.鈥
A stint working for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen at his research lab taught him programming, editing and virtual reality.
鈥淚t kind of crystallized when I made that light sculpture,鈥 Villareal said. 鈥淚t went from one thing to the next; sometimes strobe lights, then LEDs, creating red, green and blue to make millions of colors.鈥
He installed work onto his first building at PS1 in Queens, part of the Museum of Modern Art, by applying 640 LED lights onto the scaffolding.
鈥淚 go really deep into technology,鈥 he said.
Since then, he has added his light sculptures to bridges in San Francisco and London, to the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, and to galleries and museums in Switzerland; Palm Beach, Florida; Palo Alto, California; Hong Kong; Washington, D.C.; and in Madrid, among others.
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 within a framework. The resulting forms move, change, interact and ultimately grow into complex organisms that are inspired by the British mathematician John Conway鈥檚 work with cellular automata and the Game of Life.
New Mexico Museum of Art Executive Director Mark White said Villareal鈥檚 installation fit with Vladem鈥檚 building design.
鈥淲e wanted a special installation there,鈥 he said. 鈥淟eo being an Albuquerque native and having an international reputation, it made a lot of sense.
鈥淲e knew what his LED installations looked like at the National Gallery and various places across the 近距离内射合集 States.鈥
Central to Villareal鈥檚 work is the element of chance.
鈥淲e as humans are inspired by information, and we鈥檙e attracted to light,鈥 he said. 鈥淵ou have both in my work. It鈥檚 taking people on a journey, I describe my pieces often as visual campfires.鈥
Fresh from working in Tokyo as well as Santa Fe, Villareal next travels to Brown University for an October opening.