Installation view of 《KOO JEONG A: OUSSSMOS》 © KOO JEONG A. Courtesy of Leeum Museum of Art. Photo: Jeon Byung-cheol.
Leeum Museum of Art presents 《KOO
JEONG A: OUSSSMOS》, on view through December 27.
An active figure on the international art scene for over thirty
years, KOO, whose journey includes their presentation at the Korean Pavilion of
the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024, now arrives in Seoul with the artist’s
largest solo exhibition in Korea to date.
Ranging from their early works of the 1990s to newly commissioned
works for Leeum, approximately 35 works seep into every corner of the museum.
They extend beyond the M2 galleries to the lobby, the traditional Korean art
galleries, and the gabion walls. Thus, works from different times and places
encounter one another anew and resonate within the world KOO has developed over
many years: OUSSSMOS.
The exhibition title “OUSSSMOS” is a combination of “OUSSS,” a
term coined by KOO in the mid-1990s, and “COSMOS,” meaning the universe.
Functioning as a sound, as well as a prefix and suffix, “OUSSS” can at times
refer to energy and matter, existence and the universe, but is never fixed to a
single meaning. Instead, it continually combines with other meanings to create
new relationships.
Installation view of 《KOO JEONG A: OUSSSMOS》 © KOO JEONG A. Courtesy of Leeum Museum of Art. Photo: Jeon Byung-cheol.
Thus, “OUSSSMOS” points to KOO’s world, in which distant objects
and forces, memories and times meet, disperse, and continually form new
relations.
Experiencing 《OUSSSMOS》 is closer to discovering and connecting dispersed clues than to
following the works in a set order.
A monumental steel structure and a tiny tower of pencil leads; a
stone suspended in a magnetic field and a cast bronze held by gravity; surfaces
that accumulate light and return it in darkness; a scent that lingers and
disappears; centuries-old objects and works only just placed – all form
unexpected relations across the museum.
Navigating among them, visitors encounter one work while
remembering traces of another, and sometimes realize only later what they had
previously passed by without noticing.
Installation view of 《KOO JEONG A: OUSSSMOS》 © KOO JEONG A. Courtesy of Leeum Museum of Art. Photo: Jeon Byung-cheol.
This
is what it means for the entire museum to become an “OUSSSMOS.” Instead of a
single center or predetermined narrative dominating the space, different
objects and sensations, times and memories connect loosely and then disperse
again.
Like
the interval it takes for one’s eyes to adjust to darkness, or the moment a
scent unexpectedly awakens a memory, or the instant a glint appears among the
stones outside the window, KOO’s work does not demand immediate understanding.
Rather,
what we pass by matters as much as what we see, as does the moment when we come
to recognize it. 《OUSSSMOS》 is
a world discovered at each visitor’s own pace and through their own senses.
