Discover Cevdet Erek’s Secession Ornamentation

On view at Secession in Vienna until February 22nd, Cevdet Erek’s Secession Ornamentation is a site-specific installation that explores sound as architecture — not as background, but as something built, inhabited, and experienced through the body. Drawing on Adolf Loos’s Ornament and Crime, Erek reclaims ornamentation as a temporal and vibratory structure, transforming rhythm into a tool for perception, orientation, and collective presence.

For this exhibition, Erek “ornamentates” the Secession’s façade with symmetrical loudspeakers, turning the building itself into an audible surface. Inside, tactile wood reliefs modeled after Braille symbols invite touch, foregrounding bodily awareness and accessibility. Across spaces, sound becomes a shared architecture, dissolving boundaries between listener and composer, visitor and site.

Part of a long-term dialogue with local histories and architectures — from Sharjah to Marrakech, Çanakkale to Baden-Baden — this project also marks Erek’s return to Vienna, following his 2010 installation at Palais Erdödy-Fürstenberg.

With the kind support of Kira A. Princess of Prussia Foundation and SAHA.

Cevdet Erek, Secession Ornamentation, Exhibition views, Secession 2025. Foto: Oliver Ottenschläger