For the second exhibition of the in situ series—a program that invites artists to create site-specific works in dialogue with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao's architecture—Mark Leckey (b. 1964, Birkenhead, UK) draws inspiration from Sassetta's City by the Sea (1424), one of the earliest cityscapes in Western art.
In Leckey's installation, the sculpture becomes part of an imagined narrative whose temporal rhythm is shaped by a six-minute loop of sound and light composed by the artist. The ambient soundtrack—built from layered fragments of found audio, music, and intermittent voices—unfolds like a drifting current, punctuated by abrupt intrusions of speech or melody.
The installation explores how physical space, sound, and light intersect with intangible forces—digital systems or transcendental experience—to evoke transformation and instability. By intertwining material and immaterial elements, Leckey creates a space where the visible and the invisible converge, offering an encounter that feels at once immediate, uncanny, and transcendent.
