Pace adorns himself with Villareal’s light paintings
Gathered under the title “Nebulae”, eight new digital works, created using LED lights, constitute for the American artist his first solo show in Switzerland.
Leo Villareal, “Diffused Color” (GB), 2022. LED, acrylic, aluminum, electronics and custom software.
LEO VILLAREAL, COURTESY PACE
This is the sixth personal exhibition of Leo Villareal organized by the Pace gallery in the world. However, the hanging that runs until March 18 in Geneva represents his first solo show in Switzerland. Gathered under the title “Nebulae”, eight new digital works invite the visitor to enter this strange zone where the real and digital worlds rub shoulders.
Because the American artist has his own mode of expression. He creates his works from LED lights whose frequency, intensity and patterns he constantly modifies through personalized programming. His goal: to bring people to reconsider light, space and technology. And as often, this new series is inspired by natural phenomena, taken from organic and celestial imagery for this specific case. The result is hypnotic and exhilarating.
Faced with these diffuse lights where vibrating colors pulsate, one feels as if caught up in the depths of space, where the birth of a galaxy or the imminent death of a star is played out. Born in New Mexico in 1967, Leo Villareal is best known for “The Bay Lights”, this public installation inaugurated in 2013 on the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. As well as for his immense project “Illuminated River” which, in the long term, was to cover fifteen bridges along the Thames in London. For the time being, nine of them are thus illuminated every evening. And the artist is also present during artgenève, with “Optical Machine I”, a major installation positioned at the entrance to the fair, in the main hall.
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