Susan Philipsz Seven Tears Sep 6, 2019–Feb 2, 2020 This exhibition is presented in six galleries: the Entrance Courtyard, Water Court, Main Gallery, Lower South Gallery, Lower Main Gallery, and Lower East Gallery. Visit the Mezzanine on the second level for additional resources.
Berlin-based artist Susan Philipsz (b. 1965) is best known for works that explore the potential of sound to transform space, memory, and emotion. Created in response to the histories and environments of specific locations, Philipsz’s installations often include her own, untrained voice and bring new light to the places in which they are sited. She has said, “I work with sound, but that sound is always installed in a particular context, and that context, with its architecture, lighting, and ambient noises, forms the entire experience of the artwork. It is a visual, aural, and emotive landscape.” Susan Philipsz: Seven Tears features seven works that have been brought together to animate the Pulitzer’s building. The works in this exhibition span the artist’s practice, from an early recorded piece to the United States premiere of a 2019 installation. Philipsz has also created a new work, titled Too Much I Once Lamented, for the museum’s water court. Encompassing sound, sculpture, video, painting, and photography, the works in Seven Tears draw on a diversity of historical and musical sources, from Elizabethan ballads to twentieth-century rock albums. With references to rivers, tears, springs, and floods, Philipsz responds to both the centrality of water within the Pulitzer’s architecture and the location of St.