Koo Jeong A: OUSSSMOS

About the exhibition

At the center of the show in Leeum's M2 gallery is [MOBIOUSSS], a new glowing structure that combines the infinity symbol with a skatepark. Pilar Corrias, Koo Jeong A's gallery, likens it to a spacecraft that has crash-landed. You cross a red-and-blue patterned floor and pass panels made of thousands of magnets.

The work continues beyond M2, into the lobby, among the antiques in M1 and outside. The Korea Herald reports a curved slab called Gravitta (2025) in the lobby that takes in daylight and glows blue after dark, 50 crystals hidden in the outdoor gabion wall, and a scent moving between galleries. It also reports that R (2005), 1,001 drawings in 77 wooden boxes, is shown complete for the first time, though never all at once, among some 35 works.

Leeum's announcement calls this the artist's largest solo exhibition in Korea, with work from the 1990s to new commissions. OUSSSMOS joins COSMOS with OUSSS, a word Koo coined in the mid-1990s that can mean energy, matter or the universe.

About the artist

Koo Jeong A (b. 1967, Seoul) has worked since the early 1990s, and Pilar Corrias says the artist lives and works "everywhere." Many pieces are made for a particular site, using objects, images, sound and scent. Past materials have ranged from sugar cubes to aspirin and mothballs, The Korea Herald reports. ODORAMA CITIES was shown at the Korean Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024, and PKM Gallery lists solo shows at Dia Art Foundation and Centre Pompidou.

Sources: Leeum Museum of Art: OUSSSMOS · Pilar Corrias: Koo Jeong A · e-flux: Leeum announcement