Sky (Primary Title)
Leo Villareal, American, born 1967 (Artist)
My work is focused on stripping systems down to their essence to better understand the underlying structures and rules that govern how they work. —Leo Villareal
Villareal makes technology-driven light sculptures that visually manifest digital code. In the 1990s, the artist worked in Silicon Valley for a laboratory and think tank started by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen. Villareal’s work grows out of his interest in the ability of “lowest common denominators,” such as pixels and binary code, to accumulate and construct greater wholes.
In Sky, Villareal’s algorithms become physical via hundreds of light-emitting diodes, which generate vibrant gradients that oscillate and pulse. As it shifts and grows, Sky asks viewers to consider the perceptible effects of supposedly immaterial phenomena, be they lines of code, particles, or microscopic organisms.
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