Berlin Exhibition Offers Major Retrospective of Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto

Ryuichi Sakamoto's music once carried Leonardo DiCaprio through the wilderness in The Revenant and helped The Last Emperor win an Oscar for its soundtrack. Now Berlin is dedicating a major exhibition to the Japanese composer, pianist and multimedia artist, who died in 2023.

The Hamburger Bahnhof is presenting the first major retrospective of Sakamoto's work in Europe, curator Ingrid Buschmann said. Sakamoto was a pop star, composer, pianist, media artist and activist. He became internationally known in the late 1970s as a co-founder of Yellow Magic Orchestra, experimenting with electronic instruments long before techno became commonplace.

He later composed music for numerous films, including Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, which starred David Bowie. In the later part of his career, installations increasingly moved to the center of his work, Buschmann said.

The exhibition, titled “seeing sound, hearing time,” presents several room-sized installations. Visitors can listen to Sakamoto's music while watching large video works by different artists. One darkened room also contains a piano damaged in an earthquake. The museum says most of the works were created during Sakamoto's final years.

Sakamoto died at 71 after cancer. The exhibition therefore also engages with the transience of life. It opens Thursday evening as part of this year's Berlin Art Week, which begins Wednesday and includes more than 100 museums, galleries, private collections and project spaces. Performances, workshops and guided tours will run through Sunday, while the Positions contemporary and modern art fair will take place at Tempelhof Airport.

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Sakamoto was a pop star, composer, pianist, media artist and activist.