LEO VILLAREAL VOLUME

EXTENDED: May 4 – August 19, 2011
Opening Reception: Wednesday, May 4, 6-8pm

GERING & LóPEZ GALLERY is pleased to present Leo Villareal: Volume. This is Villareal’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.

For his first solo exhibition in New York since 2007, Villareal has installed a single, immersive work. Over 20,000 white LED nodes are suspended in a three-dimensional matrix of mirror-finished stainless steel. Its cylindrical form is at once dense and ephemeral, as it shimmers and oscillates between dimensions. Controlled by software code that the artist developed over an extensive period of time, like a composer working over a score, the nodes cycle through a seemingly infinite series of patterns and movements, fast and slow, bright and dark. The piece is a dazzling tone poem that draws the viewer into a deep, abstract space as it warps temporal and visual perception.

Villareal received his BA from Yale University and his MPS from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Throughout his career, Villareal has sought to work with the newest developments in technology, beginning with strobe lights in 1997 and moving into the LEDs utilized in this exhibition.

His work is represented in many international collections including The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Arario Museum, Seoul, Korea; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; IFEMA, Madrid, Spain; Margulies Collection, Miami, FL; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; and the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum, Kagawa, Japan. He has constructed site-specific commissions at such locations as Borusan Music & Art House, Istanbul, Turkey; Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; PS1/MoMA, Long Island City, NY; Grand Central Station, New York, NY; and the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, Mexico.

The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC acquired his site-specific, 200-ft long permanent installation Multiverse in 2008. His work is currently on view in the exhibition Altered States at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, FL. Villareal’s first major museum survey exhibition debuted at the San Jose Museum of Art in California last year and is currently on view at the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV. It will travel to the Nerman Museum of Art, Overland Park, KS, and Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, GA. A catalogue published by Hatje Cantz accompanies the exhibition.

Please join us for an opening reception with the artist on Wednesday, May 4 from 6-8pm