British artist Mark Leckey is opening a major new solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Bilbao this month, titled "And the City Stood Still in Its Brightness," where he continues his exploration of technology, spirituality, and contemporary culture. The show, running until April 12, 2026, marks a significant moment for the artist who has been creating stirring installations that channel the power of music and pop culture since the late 1980s.
Leckey's work has long been recognized as prophetic, predating the internet's mash-up mentality through his early use of found video footage. His iconic 1999 video "Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore" remains a cornerstone piece that captures the surreal and heightened experience of UK clubbing culture. The artist has seamlessly transitioned from analog to digital editing techniques while maintaining a keen curiosity about our accelerating online world.
The Guggenheim Bilbao's distinctive Frank Gehry building initially intimidated Leckey. "The first time I went in there I was terrified!" he admits. "It's almost like a grain silo, and it's enormous. I haven't worked at a really large scale before. My first impression was that I had to occupy the space." However, his perspective changed dramatically during a second visit when the gallery was showing Refik Anadol's ambitious audio-visual interpretation of Gehry's legacy through artificial intelligence.
"That changed everything," Leckey explains, leading him to decide to fill the space with video and sound using the Guggenheim's impressive system of projectors. His approach was also influenced by Jeff VanderMeer's 2014 book "Annihilation" and the subsequent 2018 Alex Garland film adaptation. VanderMeer's description of protagonist Lena becoming disoriented in an alien landscape, unable to tell if a tunnel is horizontal or vertical, resonated deeply with Leckey's vision for the space.
"I was trying to keep that idea in mind at the Guggenheim," he says. "It suits me at the moment, as I'm looking to create a feeling you might get in a church or chapel. I want all the senses to be invoked." This spiritual dimension runs throughout Leckey's work, reaching back through centuries to conjure a time before reason dominated our worldview.
The new exhibition includes pieces that draw inspiration from art history, particularly William Blake's intense color monotype print "Nebuchadnezzar" (1795-1805), which features a muscular figure that blends man and beast. Leckey is also drawn to medieval artistic expressions, fascinated by their unique combination of an enchanted, miraculous world coexisting with a world of reason.
"Now, there is a feeling we're coming to the end of reason," Leckey observes. "The more ubiquitous technology becomes, the more it enchants the world in some way – even though the world does not feel enchanted! There's a dark magic that comes with technological devices and a sense that you lose your physical groundedness or sense of being tethered. You are literally up in the cloud; this dematerialized space which invokes spirits."
Another significant influence on the Guggenheim show is Tuscan painter il Sassetta's 1424 painting "City by the Sea," one of the first cityscapes in Western art to place the city itself as the subject rather than the setting. Its geometric rendering is both unsettlingly flat and richly transportive. "It's such a beautiful, gorgeous painting," Leckey enthuses. "Paintings in that period were just coming out of the Byzantine, which had these very formal ideas and icons. They were just loosening up a bit, but before it all gets too big and meaty for me with the Renaissance. I don't like all that muscle!"
Leckey was particularly drawn to how il Sassetta attempted to paint spiritually, combining the physical world before his eyes with something more spectral. This duality permeates much of Leckey's own work, where music serves as a bridge between the everyday and the transcendental. His current NTS radio show, featuring an eclectic mix from doo-wop to gabber, helps maintain his connection to music's transformative power.
"Music has this ability to root itself in the local environment, but it also longs for transcendence," he explains. "It's always moving for something beyond. That's where I want to make art from, instead of from ideas or concepts." This philosophy has guided his work from early pieces like "Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore," which required extensive archival research and esoteric knowledge, to his current exploration of rapidly evolving digital landscapes.
The technological revolution has dramatically altered Leckey's creative process. Physical, time-consuming cuts that once allowed him to think through different problems can now be instantly resolved with AI tools. He expresses both dread and wonder at the speed of contemporary production. "The modern era was all about things being in our grasp, but the scale is no longer human," he reflects. "It comes back to this God-like aspect [of technology]. We become diminished in comparison."
Leckey is critical of what he sees as the art world's retreat from technological engagement in recent years. "Technology is devouring art," he states. "The art world kind of got over post-internet art like it was just a moment. I think post-internet art revealed the porosity of the art world, and after that, it tried to shore up its borders with paintings. There's a weird silence to it; all we can do is go backwards. I didn't get into art to find safety. I wanted weirdness, to be challenged."
Despite his work's engagement with class struggles and rapid global change, there remains something inherently energetic and joyful about Leckey's artistic vision. He draws inspiration from Blake's concept of getting lost in the paradise of creative work. "Once I'm lost in the work, it's ecstatic for me at times," he says. This joy stems partly from his formative years growing up in northwest England during the late 1970s and early 1980s, where he left school at 15 and discovered a vibrant musical culture amid industrial decline.
"Industry was being dismantled around us," he recalls. "Out of that came a kind of reaching beyond. It's not escapist; it's to try and bring heaven down to Earth. Find some sense of being alive." From an early age, Leckey learned that despondency and love could coexist, a lesson that continues to inform his artistic practice. "I'm in love with the world and it excites me," he concludes, embodying the passionate curiosity that has driven his decades-long exploration of contemporary life's magical possibilities.
