Leo Villareal “Interstellar”

Pace Gallery (540 W 25th St.)

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Pace presents an exhibition of new work by Leo Villareal. The show will feature 15 new sculptures in which Villareal employs LEDs and custom software to investigate space, time, and perception. Titled Interstellar, this exhibition will mark the artist’s first presentation in New York since 2017 and his seventh show with the gallery since joining its program.

Villareal’s practice is part of a lineage of artistic engagement that explores the connections between nature, technology, and human experience. The artist’s upcoming exhibition with Pace in New York will feature wall-based sculptures, including works from his new Nebulae series. Emitting hypnotic, diffused light, the Nebulae sculptures are informed by celestial imagery and evoke the dynamism of space through interplays of color and shape. Villareal creates unique and specific sequencing for each artwork through code that is generative and visceral, like nature itself. As such, no two sculptures are the same.

This presentation at Pace in New York will also include works realized at a scale that Villareal hasn’t explored in nearly a decade: two-foot square wall-mounted sculptures. These intimately scaled artworks, paired with their glass enclosures, encourage focused readings of Villareal’s abstractions. Like his larger works, the two-foot pieces invite viewers to consider the boundary separating physical and digital worlds.

Villareal harnesses the power of light, size, and site specificity for large-scale public projects, including The Bay Lights, a public art installation spanning 1.8 miles of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, and Illuminated River, a vibrant, long- term installation on view across nine bridges along the Thames in London. His most recent large-scale public artwork, Fountain (KCI), was completed in February 2023 and celebrates Kansas City’s legacy as The City of Fountains.
In addition to his museum, gallery, and public art projects, Villareal debuted his first NFT series, titled Cosmic Reef, on the leading generative art platform Art Blocks in January 2022. Created using a combination of human control and computational chance, the works in this series feature mesmeric, evolving geometries. Continuing his explorations in web3, Villareal released Cosmic Bloom in December 2022 with Outland, a platform focused on the meeting of digital technologies and contemporary art. Cosmic Bloom is a continuation of the artist’s Cosmologies series, which began with Cosmic Reef and draws inspiration from organic and biological structures, stellar phenomena, and atomic patterns.

Leo Villareal (b. 1967, Albuquerque, New Mexico) creates complex works of art with LED lights, using custom programming to constantly change their frequency, intensity, and patterning. Ranging from wall-mounted pieces and room-sized installations to public projects the scale of buildings and bridges, Villareal’s light-based works prompt reconsideration of light, space, and technology. Often inspired by natural phenomena, they evoke—but do not illustrate—elemental and atmospheric systems with emergent behavior that occurs without a predetermined outcome. Firmly rooted in abstraction, Villareal’s approach uses layered sequencing to develop his light sculptures, resulting in open-ended, immersive experiences for viewers.
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.
Since its founding by Arne Glimcher in 1960, Pace has developed a distinguished legacy as an artist-first gallery that mounts seminal historical and contemporary exhibitions. Under the current leadership of CEO Marc Glimcher, Pace continues to support its artists and share their visionary work with audiences worldwide by remaining at the forefront of innovation. Now in its seventh decade, the gallery advances its mission through a robust global program—comprising exhibitions, artist projects, public installations, institutional collaborations, performances, and interdisciplinary projects. Pace has a legacy in art bookmaking and has published over five hundred titles in close collaboration with artists, with a focus on original scholarship and on introducing new voices to the art historical canon.

The gallery has also spearheaded explorations into the intersection of art and technology through its new business models, exhibition interpretation tools, and representation of artists cultivating advanced studio practices. As part of its commitment to technologically engaged artists within and beyond its program, Pace launched a hub for its web3 activity, Pace Verso, in November 2021.

Today, Pace has nine locations worldwide, including a European foothold in London and Geneva, and two galleries in New York—its headquarters at 540 West 25th Street, which welcomed almost 120,000 visitors and programmed 20 shows in its first six months, and an adjacent 8,000 sq. ft. exhibition space at 510 West 25th Street. Pace’s long and pioneering history in California includes a gallery in Palo Alto, which operated from 2016 to 2022. Pace’s engagement with Silicon Valley’s technology industry has had a lasting impact on the gallery at a global level, accelerating its initiatives connecting art and technology as well as its work with experiential artists. Pace consolidated its West Coast activity through its flagship in Los Angeles, which opened in 2022. Pace was one of the first international galleries to establish outposts in Asia, where it operates permanent gallery spaces in Hong Kong and Seoul, as well as an office and viewing room in Beijing. Pace’s satellite exhibition spaces in East Hampton and Palm Beach present continued programming on a seasonal basis.