MEDIA: Cornell will have a media morning for reporters/photographers on Wednesday, Oct. 10 at 10:30 a.m., at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. Reporters can meet artist Leo Villareal for a tour of the installation. To RSVP, please contact Blaine Friedlander, Cornell Press Office, (607) 254-8093 or bpf2@cornell.edu.
ITHACA, N.Y. – For the first time in its 40 years, Cornell University’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art will host an exhibit so brilliant, you’ll remember it near and see it from afar. Noted artist Leo Villareal’s newest LED (light-emitting diode) installation, opens Oct. 22, 2012 at 5 p.m., placed on the outdoor ceiling of the museum’s Mallin Sculpture Court.Visitors will see luminous wonder unfolding before them – as it features 12,000 LEDs create a new, visual art experience. The newly unveiled exhibition will expand its ethereal reach as far as the city of Ithaca, and it frames a new space within the built environment of the museum’s architecture designed in 1973 by I.M. Pei.
This installation has been made possible by the generous support of Lisa and Richard Baker (Cornell ’88).
Leo Villareal’s signature pieces explore complex movement and dazzling patterns created by points of light using computer code and new technologies. His work reinterprets components of such 20th Century art movements as pop, minimalism, conceptual and post-painterly abstraction, and poetically interact with the architecture around them. Villareal recently completed a New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority commission at the Bleecker Street/Lafayette Street subway station in Manhattan. His largest installation, The Bay Lights, illuminating the west span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge in celebration of its 75th anniversary, will be unveiled in 2013. Villareal’s Multiverse (2008), designed forthe concourse walkway between the East and West Buildings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, like Cornell’s project interacts with a building designed by Pei.
Background: Planning for the Cornell project began two years ago, when Villareal – along with the project architect, Walter Smith, and Cornell donors Lisa and Richard Baker – visited the Johnson Museum to determine the optimal location for the installation. The ceiling of the Mallin Sculpture Court was chosen for its high visibility, not only on campus, but also from the city of Ithaca.
Installation: Formal installation is currently under way. Villareal will program the lights in October, spending about a week in residence at the museum and on campus, concluding with a public unveiling and lecture Oct. 22.
Related Resources:
Biography: http://www.villareal.net/
Interview (San Jose Museum of Art):
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