What does sound look like? And what does time sound like? For Ryuichi Sakamoto, these were more than philosophical questions. Throughout a remarkable career spanning electronic music, classical composition, cinema, performance and visual art, the Japanese composer continually blurred the boundaries between what is heard and what is seen. The show will be staged from 11 September 2026 – 20 June 2027.

This autumn, Ryuichi Sakamoto: seeing sound, hearing time brings his multidisciplinary practice to Berlin in the first major retrospective of the composer and artist in Europe. Opening during Berlin Art Week, the exhibition occupies approximately 1,500 square metres of the Rieckhallen, presenting seven works across five large-scale installations.

Since the 2000s, Sakamoto increasingly explored three-dimensional sound environments, working with artists including Shiro Takatani and Carsten Nicolai, as well as filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Here, sound becomes something physical, something to move through, rather than simply listen to.

Among the most evocative works is IS YOUR TIME (2017), centred on a piano damaged by the 2011 tsunami in Japan. Sakamoto transformed digitally converted seismological data from earthquakes around the world into sound, turning the damaged instrument into a meeting point between music, memory and the immense forces of nature. The piano becomes more than an object: it carries the trace of catastrophe.

Other installations draw on async (2017), created in collaboration with Takatani and Weerasethakul, while two films by Carsten Nicolai use music from 12, Sakamoto’s final album, recorded as a sonic diary between 2021 and 2022. These works give the exhibition an intimate dimension, transforming fragments of everyday experience into meditations on time and mortality.

Born in Tokyo in 1952, Sakamoto first emerged internationally with Thousand Knives in 1978 and as co-founder of Yellow Magic Orchestra. His extraordinary career encompassed pop, classical music, two operas and almost 45 film and television soundtracks. His scores earned an Academy Award, two Golden Globes and a Grammy, while his work as an artist was exhibited in museums internationally.

Yet Sakamoto’s legacy extends beyond music. A committed environmental and peace activist, he founded more trees to support forest conservation and the Tohoku Youth Orchestra to help young people affected by the 2011 earthquake through music.

Seeing sound, hearing time offers a fitting portrait of an artist who spent his life asking where music might go next, and discovering that sometimes, the most powerful sounds are the ones that exist between things. A highlight of 2026!