Susan Philipsz - Seven Tears

Susan Philipsz
Seven Tears
September 6, 2019–February 2, 2020

The Pulitzer Arts Foundation presents Susan Philipsz: Seven Tears, an exhibition of five immersive sound installations by the Turner Prize-winning artist. Born in Glasgow and now based in Berlin, Philipsz explores sound as found objects with the potential to heighten our experience of space, architecture, and history. The works in the Pulitzer exhibition range from an early recorded piece to a 2019 work that has never previously been shown in the U.S., and a new work commissioned by the Pulitzer.

Pulitzer Director Cara Starke notes, “Since its first exhibition, the Pulitzer has been celebrated as a superb environment in which to view art. This exhibition of work by the brilliant Susan Philipsz adds a new dimension to the experience of the museum, using sound to heighten our perceptions of the building and its context.”

The exhibition includes a newly commissioned installation, Too Much I Once Lamented,created for the Pulitzer’s Tadao Ando-designed building. Situated in the museum’s central water court, where a reflecting pool offers dynamic views of the surrounding environment, the installation features Philipsz singing a seventeenth-century lament that describes a heartbroken lover in a state of solitary reflection. Other works—poetic meditations on loss, hope, and longing—animate the museum’s galleries and surrounding architecture, creating a constellation of singular, immersive environments.

Pulitzer Associate Curator Stephanie Weissberg says, “Susan Philipsz’s work, which she has described as ‘visual, aural, and emotive landscape[s],’ link the personal and the collective, provoking an awareness of both where we are at a particular moment and the larger architectural and historic contexts of those places. It is our hope that Susan Philipsz: Seven Tears—which brings the Pulitzer galleries to life with sound that ranges from a seventeenth-century madrigal to a song by rock band Radiohead—will shed new light on Philipsz’s profound and poetic practice, as well as on the Pulitzer, its architecture, and its location in the city of St. Louis.”

Now on view through February 2, 2020, Susan Philipsz: Seven Tears is curated by Pulitzer Arts Foundation Associate Curator Stephanie Weissberg. The Pulitzer is the exhibition’s only venue.