Ryuichi Sakamoto, the pioneer of electronic and experimental music who died in 2023, will receive his first major retrospective in Europe at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart. The exhibition ‘seeing sound, hearing time’ opens on September 11, 2026, and runs until June 20, 2027. It brings together sound installations, films, scores, and archival material spanning five decades.
Sakamoto, who rose to fame in 1978 with the band Yellow Magic Orchestra, constantly redefined the boundaries between music, performance, and visual art. For the Berlin show, works from the 1990s to his final pieces have been assembled, including the installation ‘IS YOUR TIME’ and the collaboration ‘async–immersion tokyo’ with Shiro Takatani.
The museum will also present the work ‘ENDO EXO’ by Carsten Nicolai, which is based on Sakamoto’s music. The retrospective was previously shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) and has now been adapted for Berlin. A press preview is scheduled for September 7, 2026.
Source: www.smb.museum
