Koo Jeong A (b. 1967) captures the fleeting qualities of everyday scenes and objects around the world, bringing forth the poetic aspects of ordinariness in her work, which continues to gain international recognition. Her art spans various media, including poetry, fiction, installation, sculpture, painting, moving images, music, and architectural projects, transcending the boundaries between reality and unreality, existence and non-existence.

Koo meticulously arranges and connects minor elements within everyday spaces to create poetic atmospheres. For example, in her 1998 work Oslo, she subtly transformed the space using only light streaming through a window and white powder.
 
The materials she employs are often ordinary and trivial. The white powder in Oslo was, in fact, crushed aspirin, one of the most commonly consumed medications. Additionally, Koo brings ordinary and fragile materials like crumpled paper, discarded toys, and cigarettes into unexpected contexts, turning them into art.

She also uses intangible elements such as sound and light to create surprising compositions in everyday spaces. For instance, her work with an old tree at the Venice Biennale in 2009 blended seamlessly into its surroundings, unnoticed until viewers approached and heard its subtle trembling and humming sound.
 
In her 2010 installation Dr. Vogt, Koo transformed the entire space with a pink floor that radiated fluorescent pink light. She combined this with blue pen drawings on photographic paper, creating an experience where the gallery's light and the pink floor caused visual disorientation. Koo achieves these unfamiliar visual and perceptual experiences using simple combinations of light, color, and paper, without relying on complex machinery.

In 2012, Koo gained global attention with the debut of her public art project series ‘Skate Park.’ Collaborating with the French government, she aimed to transform the island of Vassivière, a declining town in southern France, into a vibrant space for young people by creating the first ‘Skate Park.’
 
She envisioned the skate park as a space where children visiting museums or galleries in Vassivière wouldn't get bored but instead engage with others and enjoy themselves. Thus, she transformed a neglected, unused area into a skate park coated with glow-in-the-park paint. Koo’s skate park absorbed sunlight during the day and emitted light at night, offering an extraordinary experience within an ordinary space.

This project expanded globally over the following decade, featuring at the Liverpool Biennial in 2015, the São Paulo Biennial in 2016, and the Milan Triennale in 2019, with each installation tailored to the unique characteristics of its location.

Koo also explored augmented reality (AR) technology with her 2019 work Density, transforming existing drawings into immaterial forms. Starting from daily drawings created between 2005 and 2006, Density used a smartphone AR app to display floating ice fragments in real-world spaces. Continuing her tradition of making the mundane appear unfamiliar, this work used AR technology to merge reality and unreality, inviting viewers into a new, hybrid space.

Density was later reimagined as tangible material sculptures in a solo exhibition at PKM Gallery in 2023. The levitating ice fragments entered the physical realm through the power of magnets, blurring the lines between reality and unreality, material and immaterial.

Selected as the artist for the Korean Pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale, Koo Jeong A presented a sculptural installation that evokes memories of home through "scent." Scent has been a recurring element in her work since 1996, functioning as a medium that transcends boundaries and evokes the audience's memories and emotions.
 
Koo collected survey responses on "scent memories related to Korean cities or hometowns" from people around the world, including both South and North Koreans. From over 600 personal accounts, she selected 16 to create corresponding scents, capturing memories like the smell of city air, night air, people, saltiness, and public bathhouses. These scents permeated the Korean Pavilion and the bodies of audiences through diffuser sculptures.
 
Simultaneously, the diffuser sculpture KANGSE SpSt echoes the concept of "OUSSS," a mysterious, universal entity she has developed since the 1990s. "OUSSS" is an enigma, a flexible being that transcends boundaries, transforming into anything—word, morpheme, material, or state of mind.

By utilizing elements like scent, light, temperature, and sound, which lack clear boundaries and are often invisible, Koo Jeong A transforms the ordinary into something poetic and strange, eliciting intimate and subtle experiences. Within her work, viewers are invited to transcend the boundaries around them and imagine another world beyond the surface of reality.

"Art creates coexistence and a shared future. It communicates more through various senses. The public nature of my work, like the skate park installations realized through sculptures, light, and space, draws inspiration from the phenomenon of light emission.
 
The new and the unknown cannot be easily predicted based solely on past experiences, so thinking beyond fixed ideas is always necessary. Many fictions can perhaps be understood as multiple universes surrounding reality." (Vogue, Interview with Koo Jeong A, February 20, 2024)

Koo Jeong A held solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf, Germany, 2012), Dia Art Foundation, Dia: Beacon (Beacon, USA, 2010), and Centre Pompidou (Paris, France, 2004) and gained her international stature. She participated in various group shows including Venice Biennale (2014, 2009, 2003, 2001, 1995), Liverpool Biennale (2010), Busan and Gwangju Biennale (2020; 2014, 2002, 1997), The Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA, 2010, 2004, 2002), the Fondation Louis Vuitton (Paris, France, 2015), and National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea (Seoul, Korea, 2015).

Koo was a finalist for the Hugo Boss Prize in 2002, won the Hermes Korea Prize for contemporary art in 2005, and was named as ‘2016 artist of the Year’ by the Korean Cultural Centre UK. Koo Jeong A is currently preparing for solo exhibitions at several prestigious venues, including Malmö Konsthall (2024), the Neue Nationalgalerie (2024), Haus der Kunst (2025), and the Aspen Art Museum (2026).

References

• PKM 갤러리, 구정아 (PKM Gallery, Koo Jeong A)
• 아트선재센터, 구정아: 아정구 (Art Sonje Center, Koo Jeong A: ajeongkoo)
• ARTART, VOL.94 평범한 것들을 시적으로 감각하게 하는, 구정아 | artist
• 한국문화예술위원회, 베니스비엔날레 제60회 국제미술전 한국관 전시 <구정아 – 오도라마 시티> 개막
• 보그, 구정아, “예술은 공생과 공동의 미래를 창조하죠”, 2024.02.20