The short version
- The Vienna Secession is showing Bernhard Leitner, who has used sound as a sculptural material for decades, until November 22.
- Its centrepiece is a wooden cube that plays water sounds through 48 channels of loudspeakers fixed to plastic hoses.
- Leitner says his work is visual art and that he wants visitors to listen with the whole body.
The Austrian artist Bernhard Leitner, born in 1938 and trained as an architect, has spent decades building rooms out of sound. His solo show SOUNDSPACESCULPTURE at the Secession in Vienna, curated by Jeanette Pacher, runs until November 22. Its centrepiece, made for the main hall, is Wasser Würfel / Wand Wellen (Water Cube / Wall Waves): a cube of wooden slats with loudspeakers fixed to PVC hoses, playing a 48-channel composition of water sounds whose rhythms move through the space like waves.
Nearby, Pulsierende Stille 2 (Pulsing Silence 2) is a narrow corridor between metal plates. From outside, its low frequencies are barely audible. Walking through, visitors feel the bass as a pulsing space. Other works bend sound off metal plates, and there is a sound lounger to lie on. Photographs of Leitner’s spatial experiments from the 1960s and 1970s trace where it began.
“What I do is not music but visual art,” he told ORF, in our translation. “I want to encourage spatial listening.” The Secession invites visitors to “hear them with their bodies.”
The show is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 6pm, in cooperation with the Wien Modern festival. Leitner talks with the art historian Stefan Kraus on November 19 at 6pm. Admission is not listed in the announcement, so check secession.at before going.
