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“Working with light is so primal. […] We have, as humans, this very deep response to it. So I’m interested in the hypnotic qualities of when you’re staring into a campfire – tapping into that I think is very powerful and something you can’t decode either.” —Leo Villareal

Although typically – and most famously – expressed through light sculptures as varied as their locations (the San Francisco Bay Bridge, the ceiling of a subway station), the heart of Leo Villareal’s artistic practice is in stripping down and examining basic systems and human’s responses to them. Opening today at the Armory Show will be the largest digital media artwork ever presented at the fair, Villareal’s Star Ceiling (2019), a 75-foot long installation in the walkway between Piers 90 and 92, presented in partnership with Pace Gallery.

On the occasion of the installation of his 2016 work Light Matrix (MIT), in the lobby of the Morris and Sophie Chang Building on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Villareal spoke with the MIT List Visual Arts Center about his work, and about the installation at MIT.

Museums

Sponsor
8:04

MUSEUMS: Sarah Oppenheimer: Sensitive Machine

5:24

MUSEUMS: For Walter J. Hood, Architecture Means Power

4:28

MUSEUMS: Fabric Workshop and Museum Explores Clay and Fabric

8:08

MUSEUMS: Julie Mehretu Behind-the-Scenes With Checkerboard Films

2:09

MUSEUMS: Alice Neel Paints Life “Hot off the Griddle”

Galleries

5:24

GALLERIES: Alec Soth Takes the Measure of Photography

6:09

GALLERIES: Pablo Picasso: Seven Decades of Drawing

3:41

GALLERIES: For Landon Metz, Failure is an Option

4:17

GALLERIES: Jacob El Hanani Is a Line-Maker

1:09:20

LONGFORM: Sheila Hicks Reflects From Home in Paris

Studios

1:53

VAULT: Philip Guston Biopic Trailer (1981)

3:32

STUDIOS: Joep van Lieshout on Going Beyond Beautiful Design

5:02

STUDIOS: Peter Beard: “Nature is the best thing we’ve got”

10:34

STUDIOS: Ursula von Rydingsvard’s Material Instinct (2000)

3:00

STUDIOS: Billy Childish Gets Out of the Way of the Picture

Community

36:17

PODCAST: ‘Barbara London Calling’ Launches Season 2

Sponsor
47:07

LONGFORM: Hughie O’Donoghue in Conversation with Charles Saumarez Smith

3:31

COMMUNITY: William Eric Brown Applies New Processes to Old

58:08

PODCAST: Heidi Zuckerman in Conversation with Adam Pendleton

22:57

LONGFORM: ‘To Cast Too Bold a Shadow’ Exhibition Walkthrough

Market

3:39

MARKET: For Kimsooja, Immaterial Art Achieves Memory

15:35

MARKET: How Christie’s and Sotheby’s Dominate the Art Market

3:00

MARKET: Ghada Amer on Being a Woman Artist

4:37

MARKET: Catherine Petitgas is an Enabler

2:34

MARKET: Kunsthalle Basel Is of Its Time