September 5–December 27, 2026
Seoul 04348
South Korea
Leeum Museum of Art presents KOO JEONG A: OUSSSMOS, on view from September 5 through December 27, 2026.
With an affinity for mundane and fragile objects, KOO JEONG A employs subtle gestures that render familiar spaces strange and draw attention to what normally goes unnoticed. Over three decades, KOO’s practice has expanded from small, delicate objects that evaporate or wear away over time, such as pencil leads or sugar cubes, toward elements without fixed form—gravity, magnetism, light, scent, sound, and temperature. KOO’s approach to drawing attention to what is easily passed over and allowing us to experience the familiar world differently has remained constant.
The artist’s largest solo exhibition in Korea to date, OUSSSMOS, brings together major works from the 1990s to newly commissioned works. Scattered throughout the museum—beyond the exhibition galleries to the lobby, the traditional Korean art galleries, and the gabion walls surrounding the museum—the works bring different scales, forces, and temporalities into relation, transforming the museum into an organic field.
The exhibition title, OUSSSMOS, combines OUSSS, a term coined by KOO in the mid-1990s, and COSMOS. Like OUSSS, which refuses to be fixed to a single meaning, the exhibition has neither a fixed center nor a set route. Visitors navigate among the works, collecting and connecting sensory clues they encounter or pass by. Rather than demanding attention or instructing viewers what to look at, KOO’s works leave open the possibility of being discovered—or overlooked. OUSSSMOS asks us to consider not only what we encounter, but what we pass by, and how what was overlooked might later return to our memory and our senses.
The public program begins with a Curator Talk by Sungwon Kim on Wednesday, September 9 at the Leeum auditorium. Advance booking is required via the Leeum Museum of Art website.
The exhibition is curated by Sungwon Kim with Sol Kim, assisted by Junghyun Kwon.
In partnership with Samsung Life Insurance.
Press contact: Minsun Park (minsunn.park@samsung.com), Michelle Park (daeunm.park@samsung.com)
