For those who want to get their science geek on while satisfying the left side of the brain, Madison Square Park will be the spot this fall. The latest installation organized by the park’s Mad. Sq. Art program is Buckyball by artist Leo Villareal, renown for his tech-driven LED light sculptures and installations.
The sculpture employs math and science to create a Carbon 60 molecule supersized to a grand public art scale. Its 180 LED tube lights form two nesting spheres that will light up like an oversized, sophisticated LITE BRITE. As an homage to—yes, you guessed it—Buckminster Fuller and his designs for geodesic domes, the luminous geometric sculpture is apt for the waning daylight of fall and winter. The LED lights and their software systems afford a wide-ranging and gleaming color palette that would make an en plein air painter of the past envious. Despite all the tech, Villareal also appreciates the context. He says the sculpture, “reinterprets many of the traditional elements found in the Park such as seating and historic monuments in a fresh and exciting way.”
WATCH
Leo Villareal on his site-specific LED sculpture Multiverse at the National Gallery of Art.
WHERE TO SEE
Villareal’s soaring, sci-fi sculpture will inhabit Madison Square Park from October 25 through February 2013.
