September marks the beginning of the installation of Leo Villareal's LED (light-emitting diode) project designed for the Gallery's Concourse. Villareal's work features movement and light, qualities that make this installation particularly well-suited for the moving walkway between the East and West Buildings, a subterranean area through which thousands of people pass daily. The installation features approximately 40,000 LED nodes that run through channels along the entire length of the connecting link. The artist will program sequences using custom-designed software to create abstract configurations of light through electronic circuitry. Villareal's programming both instructs the light and allows for an element of chance. While it is possible that a pattern will repeat during a viewer's experience, it is highly unlikely. Still, the eye will seek patterns in the motion, a perceptual effect of the hypnotic trailing lights.

The use of the science of vision in Villareal's work recalls an early moment in the history of 20th-century art, when painters in Europe and America applied color and music theory to their practice using a basic vocabulary of color, line, and shape. To these formal elements Villareal has added motion—through LED technology—to create mesmerizing, kinetic patterns.

The installation is located in the East Building Concourse between the cascading fountain and the post-World War II and contemporary galleries, which feature earlier examples of systems-based works by artists such as Sol LeWitt, Alfred Jensen, On Kawara, and Robert Morris, and the optical painting of Bridget Riley.

Organization: Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Sponsor: The installation is generously funded by Victoria P. and Roger Sant and by Sharon P. and Jay Rockefeller. Philanthropists Victoria P. Sant, president of the Gallery, and Sharon P. Rockefeller, president and CEO of WETA, are Gallery trustees and members of the Collectors Committee, a group of leading collectors from across the country who support the Gallery's acquisition of modern and contemporary art.

Schedule: Installation begins the week of September 8, 2008. A digital simulation of the finished project will be on view at the east end of the Concourse throughout the installation process. Traffic on the moving walkway will be intermittently halted, but visitors will always be able to pass through the space and view the work in progress. Once installed, Villareal's project will be on view for one year.

Passes: Passes are not required for this exhibition.

The installation is located in the East Building Concourse