“A particular order can be found in deepest space, in our oceans and forests, and in all living things, including ourselves – a unified code producing endless variation.  Gravity and cosmic winds shape star-forming nebulas into coral-like forms.  Flowers self-organize in radial symmetry with signals hidden from the human eye.  Stars are birthed, explode, collapse, and are reborn.  Invertebrates move on the tides of oceans, signaling with ever-changing bioluminescence.  Light bends time as events unfold in our own lives.” 

Cosmic Reef reflects on the ordered randomness in nature, capable of producing beauty and symmetry.  The individual works begin with a simple geometry that becomes more complex through composed dynamic layers, each born of a combination of human control and computational chance.  

Leo Villareal creates intricate sculptures that speak to the underlying rules and structures of systems for both gallery and public settings.  He is interested in exploring ways to express this through base units such as pixels and binary code.  Villareal is most known for two monumental public artworks: The Bay Lights, a site-specific light sculpture that occupies the entire western span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and Illuminated River, a series of generative light sculptures installed on nine bridges over the River Thames in London.

CONTROLS:

“Z”: Journey along the Z-axis   

Cosmic Reef is graphics intensive & requires a WebGL2-enabled browser.


Cosmic Reef

"Edifice" is a series of 976 massive, deteriorating structures built on strange terrain. It is an exploration of buildings being conceptualized, constructed, and eroded away under a wide variety of conditions. Edifice's outputs run the gamut between minimal and maximal, with some showing few large, static blocks of color, and others many small, highly textured and warped shapes. Each image is progressively constructed in front of the viewer's eyes. It is a system full of surprises that I'm excited to share with the world.

Edifice

Archetype explores the use of repetition as a counterweight to unruly, random structures. As each single component look chaotic alone, the repetition brings along a sense of intentionality, ultimately resulting in a complex, yet satisfying expression.

Archetype

Memories of Qilin is inspired by traditional East Asian art. It channels the sense of movement and fluidity found in classical Chinese brushwork, while drawing from the colors, patterns, and forms of ukiyo-e woodblock prints. 

The series explores elements of folklore, evoking the mythological imagery of dragons, phoenixes, flowers, and mountains.  The title references a fabled chimerical beast found throughout East Asian mythology (while the qilin is its Chinese name, it is also known in Korea as the girin and Japan as the kirin) that represents prosperity and luck.

Viewers are invited to interpret elusive forms that verge on representation. As with the stories passed on through generations, each piece is imagined, organic, and ever-in-flux.

Memories of Qilin

Para Bellum(*) is about the conflict of emotion and gut instinct versus logic and reason. 
Emotions are portrayed by color fields; logic is illustrated by words.
These two forces are fighting for dominance over the canvas.

Under the hood, ​​Para Bellum utilizes a thin language engine that was trained by reading dozens of books about rebellion and anarchy to generate (mostly) non-existent English phrases. An on-chain embedded font is used to render the familiar, readable letter shapes against the abstract fuzzy color fields.

(*) Para Bellum is half of the Latin phrase “Si vis pacem, para bellum”. If you want peace, prepare for war.

Art Blocks Curated

Cosmic Reef #46

Leo Villareal

About Cosmic Reef #46

Leo Villareal

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Edifice

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