PRESENTATION: Koo Jeong A-Land Of Ousss [ Gravitta ]

The work of Koo Jeong A incorporates intersubjective phenomena, digital features and timely imaginaries with the capacity to transform into large-scale sculpture and painting, as well as film, animation, sound and scent, to reinvent the architectural space. The artist’s site-specific reconfigurations open up narrative portals, where the various media are combined with natural elements such as wind or gravity and the electromagnetic field. In this way, alternative realities are conjured not only geographically but also in an astral sense, tracing the poetry that permeates their unique universe.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Kunsthaus Bregenz Archive

Koo Jeong A directs our gaze to the incidental, to the marginal zones of experience that are first noticed after patient observation. Invisible phenomena can be experienced through sounds, smells, and minimal gestures. The invented and found, concrete and intangible slide into one another devoid of fixed boundaries. At the same time, Koo Jeong A’s work is characterized by extraordinary restraint. Just a few, precisely arranged elements are enough to generate a presence.

In this respect, Kunsthaus Bregenz becomes an ideal sounding board. Its size and expansiveness allow the scarcely visible, the subtle, the just barely perceptible to come into its own. Koo Jeong A presents his solo exhibition “Land Of Ousss [ Gravitta ]”.

For the ground floor of Kunsthaus Bregenz, Koo Jeong A A is developing a floor object, a fragment of a skatepark taken out of context, its phosphorescent surface glowing in the dark. The sculpture extends as a sweeping curve that reorders the exhibition area. In dialogue with Peter Zumthor’s architecture, a space emerges that allows the material, light, and movement to be experienced aesthetically and poetically.

As with the artist’s earlier skateparks—in connection with the Biennale in Venice in 2024, the Triennale in Milan in 2019, as well as exhibitions in Arles, Liverpool, São Paulo, and Seoul—KOO JEONG A’s use of the track’s curve takes the form of a Möbius strip at Kunsthaus Bregenz too. Here it appears as a sculpture developed specifically for the site, precisely formulated, and integrated into the spatial atmosphere.

A significant subject for Koo Jeong A is the exploration of phenomena that are located at or beyond the threshold of human perception. Displayed on one of the upper floors are wall objects that, composed of magnets, are affixed to the walls via swivel mounts. They float like powerful, metal paravents in front of the corners of the room, making us aware that there are forces at work that remain invisible to the naked eye.

Another floor is dedicated to scent. In 2024, Koo Jeong A developed a perfume with the Korean fragrance label NONFICTION for ODORAMA CITIES in the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Now, a space for olfactory perception is also opening up in Bregenz, for the invisible, for that which can only be perceived by the senses.

On the top floor, a film installation unfolds within a constellation of greenish fluorescent stars — glowing emblems that gesture toward infinite space and vastness. The luminous points act as signs of cosmological wonder, inviting viewers to shift perceptual registers from the intimate to the immense.

Across this exhibition, Koo Jeong A’s installations resist traditional storytelling or didactic interpretation. Instead, they generate atmospheres — permeable spaces shaped by energetic shifts and refined phenomena. The works gain force not through narrative meaning but through their coherent presence, through hidden but palpable energies, and through a heightened sensitivity to perception itself.

Photo: Koo Jeong A, [ AMBIGRAM ] 2025, Oak wood, surface oil treated, Ø 255 × 53 cm, 700 kg, © Koo Jeong A, Courtesy the artist and Kunsthaus Bregenz

Info: Kunsthaus Bregenz, Karl-Tizian-Platz,  6900 Bregenz,  Austria, Duration: 31/1-25-5/2026, Days & Hours: Tue=Wed  & Fri-Sun 10:00-18:00, Thu 10:00-20:00, www.kunsthaus-bregenz.at/