Vienna Secession

Bernhard Leitner, Klang-Strahlen | Sound Beams, 2026 part of SOUNDSPACESCULPTURE on view Vienna Secession through 22 November. (Photo: Iris Ranzinger)

This year’s Gerhard and Birgit Gmoser Prize for Contemporary Art, Vienna Secession goes to .sciarrone. The jurors – Ramesch Daha, Karine Fauchard, Philipp Fleischmann, Barbara Kapusta und Eva Schlegel – chose the winner of the prize, which comes with a cash award of € 5,000. The prize will be awarded at the Secession on 14 October 2026, at 6:30 pm.

The jury explained its decision as follows: “Kia Sciarrone impressed us with his political, critical and poetic artistic practice, which stood out amongst the large number of submissions of the highest artistic quality. His works explore the complexity of history, sexuality and social heritage – an important perspective within the contemporary art scene.”

Photo: Jakob Liu Wächter

Now on view!
JJJJJerome Ellis
An unfinished calendar that commemorates slaves escaping their enslavers, 1673–1886
11.9. – 22.11.2026

The Grenadian-Jamaican-American multimedia artist, musician, composer, poet, and performer JJJJJerome Ellis explores the intersections of Blackness, music, spirituality, and non-normative speech, creating spaces for healing and communion. In this exhibition, they have filled the walls with calendrical lists on paper, executed in charcoal and adorned with flowers drawn in oil pastel.
Each date in the year marks the anniversary of numerous escapes from slavery. In this continuous cycle of anniversaries, commemoration itself becomes ongoing: a ceremony that can be performed at any time. The daily structure of the work has a personal origin.
The project emerged from research Ellis began in 2020, when they first encountered so-called “runaway slave” advertisements. Published in newspapers by enslavers, these notices included the names and physical descriptions of people who had escaped, as well as the rewards offered for their capture.

As an accompanying event to artist JJJJJerome Ellis’ solo exhibition at the Secession, contemporary art researcher Chanyoung Park and artist Marianne Vlaschits will perform “linguistic care work,” which understands that “language is a relational act that requires a willingness to calibrate to others’ languaging needs” (The Crip Linguistics Reader, 2025).
Where we stutter with pride and we speak with an accent with joy
Lecture Performance by Marianne Vlaschits and Chanyoung Park
Friday, 13 November 2026, 4:30 pm, free entry.
This event is part of 2026, whose theme is “Navigating Angst".

The exhibition has been developped in cooperation with – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm, and – Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin.



Programmed by the board of the Secession
Curated by Bettina Spörr

Photo: Oliver Ottenschläger

Now on View!
Lap-See Lam
192 Wing Lok Street
11.9. – 22.11.2026

192 Wing Lok Street presents a new body of work by Lap-See Lam comprising hand-blown glass, installation and sound. Drawing on collective and personal histories, the exhibition unfolds through a series of material and narrative translations across sites and generations.

The works on view allude to these scaffolding structures: now they are isolated, remade, reworked, and placed on polished mirrored surfaces that reflect their surroundings. One work combining actual bamboo and glass hangs directly from the wall, serving as a clear mark for the material support and symbolic value of these two elements. A continuous humming sound runs through the exhibition. Composed by Marlena Salonen and Linus Hillborg, it is emitted from a repurposed air-conditioning unit of the kind commonly found on the exterior of buildings around the world.

Funded by the Pentagram Stiftung and the .foundation. With the support of the Swedish Arts Grants Committee. The exhibition will feature glass works produced at the International Centre for Research on Glass and the Visual Arts in Marseille, as part of Lap-See Lam’s research residency.



Programmed by the board of the Secession
Curated by Haris Giannouras

Photo: Oliver Ottenschläger. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nordenhake Stockholm/Berlin/Mexico City

Now on View!
Lap-See Lam
192 Wing Lok Street
11.9. – 22.11.2026

192 Wing Lok Street presents a new body of work by Lap-See Lam comprising hand-blown glass, installation and sound. Drawing on collective and personal histories, the exhibition unfolds through a series of material and narrative translations across sites and generations.

The works on view allude to these scaffolding structures: now they are isolated, remade, reworked, and placed on polished mirrored surfaces that reflect their surroundings. One work combining actual bamboo and glass hangs directly from the wall, serving as a clear mark for the material support and symbolic value of these two elements. A continuous humming sound runs through the exhibition. Composed by Marlena Salonen and Linus Hillborg, it is emitted from a repurposed air-conditioning unit of the kind commonly found on the exterior of buildings around the world.

Funded by the Pentagram Stiftung and .foundation . With the support of the Swedish Arts Grants Committee. The exhibition will feature glass works produced at the International Centre for Research on Glass and the Visual Arts in Marseille, as part of Lap-See Lam’s research residency.

Programmed by the board of the Secession
Curated by Haris Giannouras

Photo: Lap-See Lam, 192 Wing Lok Street, installation view, Secession 2026. Photo: Oliver Ottenschläger. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nordenhake Stockholm/Berlin/Mexico City

Now on view!
Bernhard Leitner
SOUNDSPACESCULPTURE
11.9. – 22.11.2026

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. 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.

We would like to thank Wien Modern for their kind cooperation.
As part of our cooperation with Wien Modern, a public talk between Bernhard Leitner and Stefan Kraus, art historian and former director of the Kolumba Museum in Cologne, will take place in the exhibition on Thursday 19 November at 6 pm.

We thank the main sponsor of the exhibition, Arbeiterkammer Wien.

The exhibition and the accompanying publication SOUNDSPACESCULPTURE of Bernhard Leitner are made possible by the generous support of Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne.

Programmed by the board of the Secession
Curated by Jeanette Pacher

Photo: Iris Ranzinger

Opening night at the Secession
On Thursday, we celebrated the opening of our new exhibitions with an evening dedicated to sound, space, movement, and artistic exchange.

Bernhard Leitner
SOUNDSPACESCULPTURE

Lap-See Lam
192 Wing Lok Street

JJJJJerome Ellis
An unfinished calendar that commemorates slaves escaping their enslavers, 1673–1886

11.9.–22.11.2026

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this special evening.




Photo: Natascha Unkart

Bernhard Leitner in conversation with Stefan Fricke and Jeanette Pacher.

Yesterday, we had the pleasure of welcoming Bernhard Leitner for an engaging conversation with Stefan Fricke and Jeanette Pacher, exploring sound, space and perception.

A wonderful talk organised by the Secession Friends. Thank you to everyone who joined us!

Friendly reminder!

JJJJJerome Ellis
An unfinished calendar that commemorates slaves escaping their enslavers, 1673–1886
11.9. – 22.11.2026

Opening: Thursday, 10.9.2026, 7 pm

Photo: JJJJJerome Ellis, roses for secession, 2026

Friendly reminder!

Lap-See Lam
192 Wing Lok Street
11.9. – 22.11.2026

Opening: Thursday, 10.9.2026, 7 pm



Photo: workshop recording, Cirva, Marseille. Photo © Cirva - Bérangère Huguet_1