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Date September 28, 2024
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Artist Leo Villareal returns to Brown to reflect on his immersive campus light installation

The world-renowned artist and creator of “Infinite Composition” in Brown’s Lindemann Performing Arts Center shared insights on his creative process at a late-September Light in Art and Architecture Symposium.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A year after debuting his three-dimensional light installation in Brown University’s Lindemann Performing Arts Center, award-winning artist Leo Villareal returned to campus for a two-day symposium during which he reflected on his immersive public artwork at Brown and the ways it has added a new dimension to his overall body of work.

Villareal’s “Infinite Composition” adorns 30 structural columns with illuminated panels of white LEDs that flow in an endless variety of patterns in the Nelson Atwater Lobby of The Lindemann, which opened in Fall 2023 in the University’s Perelman Arts District. The installation is viewable from the street and adjacent campus spaces, inviting community members into the creative activity of the building.

Villareal said the installation is in some ways a departure from his other public artworks, which include iconic pieces such as “The Bay Lights,” which illuminated nearly two miles of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge for 10 years and is set to return next year, and the “Multiverse” installation in the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

“For me, this is a very new type of piece,” Villareal said. “I’ve made a lot of volumetric pieces using LED strips, but usually those are long strips, and they have a single channel of LED, and it’s not the resolution that these columns have. This is really the first time I’ve done something like this, which is volumetric, and you can sort of be inside the artwork.” 

“Infinite Composition” by Leo Villareal. Photo by Nick Dentamaro/Brown University.

Villareal spoke at Brown on Friday, Sept. 27, during the first day of the Light in Art and Architecture Symposium, which featured artist panels, roundtable discussions, a tour and other events in celebration of Villareal's luminous installation. The symposium was presented by the Department of the History of Art and Architecture as part of the Brown Arts Institute’s IGNITE series. 

During a presentation and wide-ranging discussion with noted architecture critic Paul Goldberger, Villareal reflected on his youth, his creative process and the story behind his most noteworthy works, including “Illuminated River,” a long-term illumination of several bridges over the Thames in London. 

Villareal said that some aspects of his creative process require precise planning and thought, while others emerge from moment to moment, as was the case with “Infinite Composition.” 

“When [I was] making this work, it [was] very improvisational,” Villareal said. “I’m trying things out, and I’m interested in concepts of emergent behavior and artificial life, meaning that you don’t necessarily know what the result is going to be — you try something and wait for those moments of surprise to occur.”

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Leo Villareal spoke with Paul Goldberger at Brown University on Friday, Sept. 27. Photo by Peter Chenot/Brown University.

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“We’re all naturally attracted to light, so it is a very seductive material,” artist Leo Villareal said during his talk. Photo by Peter Chenot/Brown University.

He recalled that he sat in the lobby of The Lindemann for many sessions — “long into the night and the day” — looking at the artwork from different perspectives. He tuned and adjusted it using a custom-designed software that powers the artwork behind the scenes. 

“We worked long and hard to find the exact cocktail of LED, color, temperature, glass and a way to cover the columns in such a way that helps to kind of almost make them disappear, which I was quite excited about,” he said. 

Villareal said he wanted to ensure that the piece, which is visible from the outside as well as inside of The Lindemann, blends well into the surrounding streetscape and natural environment. For example, the light “softens” at night, as to not overwhelm passersby. After dark, when viewed from the outside, shadows from nearby trees appear to become part of the installation. 

When Goldberger asked him to describe his medium, Villareal said he views himself as a light sculptor. 

“We’re all naturally attracted to light, so it is a very seductive material,” Villareal said. 

Villareal, who grew up in New Mexico and lives in New York, shared how attending boarding school at Rhode Island’s Portsmouth Abbey School was influential to his development as an artist and led him to study set design and sculpture at Yale University. 

He took classes in painting and drawing for the first time at Portsmouth Abbey and started traveling to Providence, Boston and New York to visit art museums, where he started seeing “a whole new level of art.” 

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During the talk, Villareal praised The Lindemann’s architect, Joshua Ramus of the New York firm REX, who was in attendance, and described the building as sublime. 

“The way the lobby just floats in this cantilever — it’s like a magic trick,” Villareal said. 

The planning process for The Lindemann’s site-specific installation spanned about nine years. “There was a tremendous amount that went into this behind the scenes, and all that thoughtfulness results in what you see,” Villareal said. 

Villareal said he was thrilled to return to Brown to visit his installation. 

“It’s a very neat, very special piece, and it's special to have it in a place like Brown, in an academic environment where you have students studying arts, architecture, engineering, programming — and in a way, the work embodies this blend of those things,” Villareal said. “I think more and more, that’s what schools are trying to do, mix disciplines up and try hybrid forms. The [Lindemann] Performing Arts Center is exactly that. It’s a machine for the future.” 

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