Artist Blog - Leo Villareal

Today I want to talk about Leo Villareal, his work deals with light and sound and in most of it he is creating patterns with LEDs as large scale installations. He sequences the LEDs in such a way that patterns and rhythms are created. The pieces evolve as the parameters that he assigns to the lights dictate the way the lights interact and change. It expresses a sort of duality between the medium and subject matter. While the patterns and movements of the lights appear very natural, flowing in ways that seem to respond to physics, the medium lends itself to be very cold and unnatural. It lacks the feeling of a handmade work and is very computerized but it still reads in a natural way. A lot of it makes the viewer try to decipher the patterns and want to find some sort of meaning or form in it. It relates to my work because my work is inspired by trying to understand natural patterns and how they correlate to others. I also find the simplicity of these moving lights to be beautiful and calming. They seem to relate to cosmic forces in the ways that they randomly create specific patterns and forms.

Leo Villareal, Stars, 2007, LED light sculpture

Leo Villareal, Comforter, inflatable light installation, 2006

Leo Villareal, Field, 2007, dimensions unknown