Leo Villareal

Illumination Artist

Leo Villareal, 58, is a Brooklyn-based artist who uses pixels and binary code to create monumental light installations. He has made some of the largest public art in the world. In 2021, Villareal displayed Illuminated River, which connected nine bridges in central London into one gigantic artwork. For the 75th anniversary of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in 2013, Villareal strung 25,000 programmable white LED lights along the bridge’s western span to create aperiodic, 1.8-mile-long waves of illumination. This spring Villareal will inaugurate a permanent version of The Bay Lights with 50,000 lights positioned on both spans. Inspired by mathematician John Conway's work with cellular automata and the Game of Life, Villareal programs the lights to follow simple algorithmic rules that lead to unpredictable, complex patterns.