Image: Secession Building, Vienna
Bernhard Leitner’s solo exhibition ‘SOUNDSPACESCULPTURE’ is scheduled at the Secession from 11 September to 22 November 2026. The exhibition will present ‘Wasser Würfel / Wand Wellen (2026)’, a new large-format work developed for the Secession. The work will be shown in the context of selected works.
For more than five decades, Leitner has explored how sound—including its movement, frequency, timbre and volume—can be used to shape and organize space sculpturally. The exhibition invites visitors to engage with Leitner’s artistic practice and sculptural sound architectures both physically and acoustically.
Leitner began recording his theoretical ideas about sound-space sculptures in drawings and notes after moving from Vienna to New York in 1969, where he lived until 1982. Originally trained as an architect, he came to understand sound as a building material, with his thinking influenced by new music, classical and contemporary dance, and visual art.
Leitner describes his works as instruments for creating and changing space through sound, allowing and requiring particular movements of sound and particular ways of defining space. The exhibition spans early theoretical investigations in sketches, photographs and graphics, as well as significant works addressing the idea of ‘body hearing’.
The Secession presents Leitner as a pioneer of sound art who has had a lasting influence on subsequent generations of artists. The exhibition is curated by Jeanette Pacher.
