[K-ART FOCUS] For Koo Jeong-a, missing is part of seeing

Koo Jeong-a’s new solo exhibition at Leeum Museum of Art turns missing and incomplete seeing into its central idea. The show, titled KOO JEONG A: OUSSSMOS, opened after a rainy afternoon experience of searching for hidden crystals and runs through Dec. 27. Koo said seeing is understanding, while Leeum curator Kim Sung-won described the exhibition as her right to miss.

The exhibition features a new 8-meter-wide steel work, MOBIOUSSS, commissioned for Leeum and shaped like interconnected tunnels from eye level and an infinity symbol from above.

R, shown in its entirety for the first time, consists of 1,001 drawings and 77 wooden boxes, but no viewer can see all 1,001 drawings at once.

Koo Jeong-a was born in Seoul and studied at Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris before settling in Paris in the 1990s.

Her earlier works mentioned in the article include OTRO, a glow-in-the-dark skatepark completed in 2012 on Ile de Vassiviere, and ODORAMA CITIES, the 2024 Korean Pavilion project at the Venice Biennale built from 17 scents based on more than 600 scent memories.

Published Sep 4, 2026 12:00 pm KST

Updated Sep 4, 2026 2:10 pm KST

Leeum's new exhibition explores artist's universe of the unseen and art of not seeing everything

Koo Jeong-a with one of her installation works at "KOO JEONG A: OUSSSMOS" at Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul / Courtesy of Leeum Museum of Art

This is the first in a series spotlighting Korean artists whose distinct creative worlds are coming into focus in the country’s vibrant autumn art season. —ED.

Koo Jeong-a makes art from what people usually fail to notice: the lingering trace of scent, a glow that emerges only after darkness falls and a crystal that flashes only when a viewer happens to stand in the right place.

Her new solo exhibition at Leeum Museum of Art, “KOO JEONG A: OUSSSMOS,” turns that preoccupation into a museum-wide experience.

On a rainy afternoon, the first challenge was simply to locate 50 crystals hidden in the dark gabion wall outside the gallery — a task that seemed designed to test whether looking is the same as seeing. In the work, titled “A Reality Upgrade & End Alone,” (2003/2026) the crystals refused to announce themselves. Only after shifting position and looking again did a small flash of light appear.

That fleeting discovery — or the possibility of never finding it at all — is integral to her work.

Koo Jeong-a's “A Reality Upgrade & End Alone,” (2003/2026) installed at Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul / Courtesy of Leeum Museum of Art

“Seeing is understanding,” Koo said at a press event Monday for her new exhibition. “I think seeing is knowing.” Yet the artist added that she cannot compel viewers to understand her works; she only hopes they will find their own way toward them.

Koo, 59, was born in Seoul and studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Since settling in Paris in the 1990s, she has moved between cities and mediums — drawings, sculpture, installation, film, sound, animation, augmented reality and architecture — while describing herself as someone who “lives and works everywhere.”

The artist, who has long kept her personal life largely out of public view, has a quiet, enigmatic presence and a fondness for inventing playful terms by combining familiar words. Museum staff who worked with her described Koo a far warmer and more charming collaborator than her reserved public presence might suggest — an artist who speaks sparingly and often communicates her ideas more readily through drawings than words.

She gained wider international attention for “ OTRO,” a fully functioning glow-in-the-dark skatepark completed in 2012 on Ile de Vassiviere in central France, where she transformed public recreation into a communal, after-dark sensory experience.

In 2024, Koo was the lead artist representing the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale with “ODORAMA CITIES,” which used 17 fragrances distilled from more than 600 personal scent-memories to construct an olfactory portrait of Korea and a plural, transnational sense of Korean identity.

Her materials and scale have transformed radically over the three decades, from sugar cubes and mechanical pencil leads to scent, magnets, glow-in-the-dark skate parks and a nearly 6-ton stainless steel structure.

However, the central question has remained: How might people notice what familiarity has taught them to pass by?

Koo Jeong-a's "MOBIOUSSS" (2026) installed at Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul / Courtesy of Leeum Museum of Art

At the heart of the exhibition is “MOBIOUSSS” (2026), an 8-meter-wide steel work commissioned for Leeum. At eye level, it resembles a maze of interconnected tunnels; seen from above, it resolves into an infinity symbol.

Its title combines the name of mathematician August Mobius with “OUSSS,” Koo’s invented term that can shift between a sound, prefix and suffix without settling into a fixed definition.

The massive work is paired with “UNTITLED” (1998), a nearly imperceptible arrangement of 57 mechanical-pencil leads standing against a small wall. The slender structure seems so vulnerable that the slightest touch or a blow of air could scatter it. Another work in the show is her early sugar-cube house structure assembled without adhesive, its broken-off fragments retained as part of a small landscape.

Koo Jeong-a's "UNTITLED" (1998), a line of 57 mechanical-pencil leads standing against a wall, is installed at Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul during a press preview of "KOO JEONG A: OUSSSMOS," Monday. Newsis

The contrast invites a deceptively simple question: Is the larger object necessarily stronger, and the smaller one necessarily fragile?

Koo resists such fixed readings. The sugar cubes and pencil leads may be physically delicate, she said, but they are also products of highly organized industrial systems. “They are materially fragile, but they are objects made within a very strong system,” she said.

The same ambiguity runs through her pairing of rough rocks and luminous crystals.

Both are materials formed from the earth, but their appearance and cultural values appear radically different. Koo is interested in how crystals, once understood as rare and precious, can now be manufactured at industrial scale in laboratories — and how neither fragility and nor preciousness is a permanent property.

The show also withholds as much as it presents.

“R” (2005), comprising 1,001 drawings and 77 wooden boxes, is shown in its entirety for the first time — but no viewer can see all 1,001 drawings at once. Some are hung while the rest remain in the wooden boxes distributed across three spaces. The displayed drawings rotate periodically during the exhibition. Here, incompleteness is not a deficiency but a condition of encounter.

Exhibition view of "KOO JEONG A: OUSSSMOS" at Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul / Courtesy of Leeum

Kim Sung-won, Leeum’s deputy director and chief curator of the exhibition, described this as Koo’s “right to miss.”

“Missing something has the same value as seeing it,” Kim said. “When we realize what we have missed, we may gain even more.”

Kim said Koo’s sustained importance lies in her refusal of a culture that prizes speedy images, spectacle and immediate explanation. Her practice, she said, poses a question about the possibility of accepting what is not fully explained or understood.

“In an age of speed and spectacle, her work proposes time in which we can remain,” she said.

The exhibition runs from Saturday through Dec. 27.

具贞娥在李姆美术馆举办的全新个展以“缺失与不完整的观看”为核心主题。展览名为“具贞娥：OUSSSMOS”，开幕式源于一场雨后午后寻找隐藏水晶的体验，展期至12月27日。具贞娥表示，观看即理解，而李姆美术馆策展人金成元则将此次展览描述为她“错过的权利”。

展览展出了一件名为 MOBIOUSSS 的全新 8 米宽钢结构作品，该作品由 Leeum 委托创作，从视线高度看呈相互连接的隧道状，从上方看呈无限符号状。

R 是首次完整展出的作品，由 1001 幅图画和 77 个木盒组成，但任何观众都无法一次看到全部 1001 幅图画。

具正娥出生于首尔，曾在巴黎美术学院学习，20世纪90年代定居巴黎。

文章中提到的她早期的作品包括 OTRO，这是一个于 2012 年在瓦西维耶岛建成的夜光滑板公园；以及 ODORAMA CITIES，这是 2024 年威尼斯双年展韩国馆项目，由 17 种基于 600 多种气味记忆的气味构成。

发布于2026年9月4日韩国时间下午12:00

更新于2026年9月4日下午2:10（韩国标准时间）

Leeum 的新展览探索了艺术家眼中不可见的世界以及“不看世界”的艺术。

具贞娥在首尔李姆美术馆举办的“具贞娥：OUSSSMOS”展览中展示其装置作品之一 / 图片由李姆美术馆提供

这是本系列报道的第一篇，旨在聚焦韩国艺术家，他们独特的创作世界正随着韩国充满活力的秋季艺术季而逐渐为人所知。——编者注

Koo Jeong-a 从人们通常不会注意到的事物中汲取艺术灵感：残留的气味、夜幕降临后才会出现的微光，以及只有当观者恰好站在正确位置时才会闪烁的水晶。

她在李姆美术馆举办的全新个展“具正娥：OUSSSMOS”将这种关注转化为整个博物馆的体验。

在一个雨后的午后，第一个挑战是找到隐藏在画廊外黑暗石笼墙中的50颗水晶——这项任务似乎旨在检验“看”是否等同于“看见”。在名为《现实升级与孤独终结》（2003/2026）的作品中，这些水晶拒绝现身。只有变换位置再次观察后，才会出现一丝微光。

这种转瞬即逝的发现——或者永远无法发现它的可能性——是她作品不可或缺的一部分。

具正娥作品《现实升级与孤独的终结》（2003/2026）现藏于首尔李姆美术馆 / 图片由李姆美术馆提供

“眼见为实，”具荷娜周一在新展的新闻发布会上说道，“我认为眼见即知晓。” 然而，这位艺术家补充道，她无法强迫观众理解她的作品；她只希望他们能找到自己理解作品的方式。

现年 59 岁的 Koo 出生于首尔，曾在巴黎美术学院学习。自 20 世纪 90 年代定居巴黎以来，她不断穿梭于不同的城市和艺术媒介之间——绘画、雕塑、装置、电影、声音、动画、增强现实和建筑——她自称是一个“在各地生活和工作”的人。

这位艺术家长期以来都将个人生活与公众视线隔离开来，她本人安静而神秘，喜欢将常用词汇组合起来，创造出一些趣味盎然的词语。曾与她共事的博物馆工作人员形容，库女士本人比她内敛的公众形象要热情迷人得多——她是一位不善言辞、更倾向于用绘画而非语言来表达想法的艺术家。

她凭借“OTRO”获得了更广泛的国际关注。“OTRO”是一个功能齐全的夜光滑板公园，于 2012 年在法国中部的瓦西维耶岛建成，在那里，她将公共娱乐活动变成了一种社区性的、夜间的感官体验。

2024 年，具世华作为韩国馆的首席艺术家参加了威尼斯双年展，展出了作品“嗅觉城市”。该作品使用了从 600 多个个人气味记忆中提炼出的 17 种香水，构建了一幅韩国的嗅觉肖像，以及一种多元的、跨国的韩国身份认同感。

三十年来，她的材料和规模发生了根本性的变化，从方糖和自动铅笔芯到气味、磁铁、夜光滑板公园和近 6 吨重的钢结构。

然而，核心问题依然存在：人们如何才能注意到那些因习以为常而让他们视而不见的事情呢？

具正娥的作品《MOBIOUSSS》（2026）在首尔李姆美术馆展出 / 图片由李姆美术馆提供

展览的核心作品是为李姆创作的8米宽的钢结构作品《MOBIOUSSS》（2026）。从视线高度看，它像是一个由相互连接的隧道组成的迷宫；从上方俯瞰，它则呈现出一个无穷符号。

它的标题结合了数学家奥古斯特·莫比乌斯的名字和 Koo 发明的术语“OUSSS”，该术语可以在声音、前缀和后缀之间转换，而不会形成固定的定义。

这件巨型作品与《无题》（1998）并置展出，后者是由57根自动铅笔芯组成的几乎难以察觉的装置，它们倚靠在一堵矮墙上。这纤细的结构看起来如此脆弱，仿佛轻轻一碰或一阵风就能将其吹散。展览中的另一件作品是她早期用方糖搭建的房屋结构，未使用任何粘合剂，其破碎的碎片被保留下来，构成了一幅小型景观。

具正娥（Koo Jeong-a）的作品《无题》（UNTITLED，1998）由57根自动铅笔芯组成，沿墙而立。周一，在首尔Leeum美术馆举办的“具正娥：OUSSSMOS”展览媒体预展上，该作品被展出。

这种对比引出了一个看似简单的问题：较大的物体就一定更坚固，较小的物体就一定更脆弱吗？

Koo并不认同这种固定的解读。她说，方糖和铅笔芯或许在物理上很脆弱，但它们也是高度组织化的工业体系的产物。“它们在物质上很脆弱，但它们是在一个非常强大的体系中制造出来的，”她说。

她将粗糙的岩石和闪亮的晶体并置在一起，也体现了同样的暧昧性。

两者都是地球形成的物质，但它们的外观和文化价值却截然不同。库感兴趣的是，曾经被视为稀有珍贵的晶体，如今如何在实验室中进行工业化生产——以及脆弱性和珍贵性都不是永恒不变的属性。

该节目既展现了很多内容，也隐藏了很多内容。

由1001幅画作和77个木盒组成的《R》（2005）首次完整展出——但观众无法同时看到全部1001幅画作。部分画作悬挂展出，其余画作则保留在分布于三个展厅的木盒中。展览期间，展出的画作会定期轮换。在此，不完整并非缺陷，而是相遇的必要条件。

首尔Leeum美术馆“具正娥：OUSSSMOS”展览现场 / 图片由Leeum美术馆提供

Leeum 副馆长兼本次展览首席策展人金成元将此描述为具“失利的权利”。

“错过某样东西和看到它一样有价值，”金说。“当我们意识到自己错过了什么时，我们可能会获得更多。”

金女士认为，具惠英红之所以能持续产生重要影响，在于她拒绝接受那种崇尚快速影像、奇观和即时解释的文化。她说，具惠英红的创作实践提出了一个问题：我们是否有可能接受那些尚未被完全解释或理解的事物？

“在这个追求速度和奇观的时代，她的作品提出了我们可以停留的时间理念，”她说。

展览从周六持续到12月27日。