Bernhard Leitner

SOUNDSPACESCULPTURE

“All works are sound space instruments. Each of them stipulates certain movements of sound, a certain way of defining space. Just as a wide variety of pieces can be played with a conventional sound instrument, so a large number of temporal-spatial programs, that is a large number of different experiences, can be created with and within each sound space instrument.” (Bernhard Leitner, New York, 1977)

For over five decades, Bernhard Leitner has dedicated himself to the idea of using sound – its movement, frequency, timbre, and volume – to sculpt and shape space. As early as 1969, when he moved from Vienna to New York, where he would live until 1982, he started setting down initial theoretical reflections on possible sound-space sculptures in drawings and notes. They illustrate how the trained architect, whose thinking is influenced by New Music as well as classical and contemporary dance and visual art, began to conceive of sound as a building material.

In his sprawling solo exhibition SOUNDSPACESCULPTURE, Bernhard Leitner presents a new large-scale work he has developed specifically for this occasion, flanked by a selection of other works. The show offers visitors an opportunity to engage with Leitner’s art and key questions guiding his research, and to experience his sculptural sound architectures or sonic spatial drawings not just acoustically but holistically – to hear them with their bodies. A pioneer of sound art, Leitner has had a sustained influence on subsequent generations of artists. The exhibition traces a long arc from his early theoretical explorations in sketches, photographs, and prints to significant works probing the concept of body listening and on to a new work created for the Secession – Water Cube / Wall Waves (2026). The idea underlying this piece arguably harks back to the Soundcube, which Leitner conceived back in 1969: a model that was purely theoretical at the time, it envisioned a cube equipped with multiple speakers. In these early drawings, Leitner already outlined possibilities for organizing sound in three dimensions. Many of the ideas he formulated at the time – sound lines, horizontal and vertical, swinging, vaulting, guiding sonic movements – constitute a vocabulary that the artist has continued to develop and refine.

In Water Cube, water sounds travel through a sound system attached to PVC hoses within a monumental cubic space in accordance with a precise choreography. The 48-channel sound-space composition draws both short and long lines and waves into the space in varying rhythms. The geometric form of the cube is Leitner’s response to the grid that defines the architecture of the exhibition space, structuring the terrazzo floor and glass ceiling as well as the coffered doors. Above the central skylight, eight speakers are installed along the perimeter line, creating a homogeneous horizontal acoustic surface that is in turn intersected by a vertical sonic axis extending from the glass ceiling to the floor in front of Water Cube.

The Sound Chair (sound-space composition 1975, sculptural realization 2022) on view at the Secession shifts the act of listening directly onto and into the resting body, which is traversed by the sounds from two speakers. The work lets the listener experience firsthand that we hear sound not exclusively via the ear but with our entire bodies – in this instance, the flowing movement between a sound source in the chest area and one by the foot exemplifies a phenomenon the artist calls “body listening”. In Pulsating Silence 2 (2026), three sets of two metal plates suspended in parallel are each fitted with a speaker emitting low frequencies (75-84-92 hertz) that are inaudible or barely audible from the outside; their bass-heavy oscillations generate vibrations that are perceived as a pulsating space when one walks between them. In Sound Beams (2026), sound beams emanating from the centre of parabolic dishes are deflected by metal plates (the reflectors) and ultimately become perceptible as “acoustic images” on walls where there is no sound source. For the gallery housing Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze (1902), Leitner has designed an artistic intervention that operates in a similar way. A parabolic dish installed in the room projects four high-pitched sound beams toward the ceiling and into the room.

In making his works, Leitner draws on a sound library he has compiled over decades. It encompasses noises, spoken language, and recordings of acoustic instruments, which he subjects to digital editing. Rather than soliciting detached contemplation, his works insist on physical presence. Sound both envelops and permeates the body, bringing a fundamental challenge to the familiar distinction between inside and outside; the question of where the body ends and space begins is deliberately left open. In this way, Leitner’s art invites the listener to conceive of architecture and sculpture not as static form but as a malleable structure that is reshaped with every movement of the body and every sonic event. Or as the artist puts it in conversation with the curator Jeanette Pacher:

“When the first experiments on the body were done after 1972/73, I was also convinced that, from the perspective of acoustic space, it was much more complex. It went far beyond the physical concept of calculating a concert hall; it is an elementary experience that we make constantly, but one that is not always consciously realized. That is where the true mystery and wonder of space and acoustics begins, when they are viewed not merely from a physical perspective, but in their entire complexity.”