Koo Jeong A

Koo Jeong A (they/them) is constantly in orbit, living and working everywhere. In their practice, architectural elements, texts, drawings, paintings, sculptures, animations, sound, film, words, and scents play a significant role. Throughout the years, Koo has investigated and blurred the lines between their artwork and the space it occupies. The artwork adds new layers to any given space and Koo manages to merge small intimate experiences and large-scale immersive works.

The curatorial approach for the Korean Pavilion 2024 has been to combine some of the key subjects and sculptural elements that Koo Jeong A has worked with during the last three decades. With the new commission Odorama Cities, created especially for the Korean Pavilion, Koo delves into the nuances of our spatial encounters, investigating how we perceive and recollect spaces, with a particular emphasis on how scents, smells, and odors contribute to these memories. With the pavilion itself, Koo explores an expanded tactility.

Some of the prominent interests in Koo’s art, such as immaterialism, weightlessness, endlessness, and levitation, are keywords throughout the Korean Pavilion. They are embedded and engraved as infinity symbols directly into the new wooden floor, manifested as two floating wooden möbius-shaped sculptures and a levitating, scent-diffusing bronze figure, and last but not least symbolized in the scents that transforms the pavilion into a collection of olfactory memories.

These scent memories are a cornerstone in Odorama Cities. During the summer of 2023, Koo collected them with the aim of making a scent portrait of the Korean peninsula. Through social media, advertisements, press releases, and personal one-on-one meetings, the team behind the Korean Pavilion has reached out to Koreans and non-Koreans – to anyone who has a relationship to Korea – and asked: “What is your scent memory of Korea?” This open call has generated more than 600 written statements about Korean scents. A perfumer, armed with the curated stories and keywords, took on the task of interpreting and incorporating them into the creation of 16 distinct scent experiences for the pavilion and a single commercial fragrance.

Koo Jeong A (they/them, lives and works everywhere) has gained the attention of the international art world through their distinctive artistic practice of examining the fragile and ephemeral nature of objects and everyday lives to highlight their poetic mundaneness. Koo works across a diverse range of media—from scents, drawings, paintings, sculptures, installations, moving images, architectural projects, poetries, and fictions—and their delicate and detailed works question the boundaries between fact and fiction and the actuality and imaginary. Koo has made works that are seemingly casual and commonplace, yet at the same time remarkably precise, deliberate, and considered. Many of their works are conceived within site-specific environments that question the limits of fact and fiction, the imaginary and actuality of our world. Koo considers the connection of energies between a place and people, relying on chance to drive their encounters.

Koo held solo shows at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany (2012), Dia Art Foundation, Dia: Beacon, USA (2010), and Centre Pompidou, France (2004), where they gained their international stature. They have participated in various international exhibitions, including Venice Biennale, Italy (2014, 2009, 2003, 2001, 1995), Liverpool Biennale, UK (2010), Busan and Gwangju Biennales, South Korea (2020; 2014, 2002, 1997), the Guggenheim Museum, USA (2010, 2004, 2002), Fondation Louis Vuitton, France (2015), and National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, South 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.

Seolhui Lee (b. 1987, lives and works in Aarhus) is the chief curator at Kunsthal Aarhus in Denmark (2023–present). She previously served as the head of the exhibition team for the Busan Biennale 2020, was a curator at the Seoul Museum of Art (2018–2019), and worked for the Korea Artist Prize 2012 at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, South Korea (2012–2013). In addition, Lee has served as an adjunct professor at the Korea National University of Arts (2019–2022) and the Kaywon University of Art & Design, South Korea (2022–2023). In conjunction with her studies, Lee’s essays have been published in Korean Contemporary Art Since 1990 (2017) and Reading Korean Contemporary Art with Keywords (2019). She is also a contributor for various art publications, including the contemporary Korean art magazine Art In Culture since 2020.

Jacob Fabricius (b. 1970, lives and works in Copenhagen) is the director of Art Hub Copenhagen in Denmark (2021–present). Prior to this, Fabricius was the artistic director at Kunsthal Aarhus (2016–2021), where he curated several exhibitions by South Korean artists. In 2019, he was appointed as the artistic director for the Busan Biennale 2020 and curated the exhibition Words at an Exhibition: an exhibition in ten chapters and five poems. Fabricius has also served as the director at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Denmark (2013–2014), artistic director at Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2008–2012), associate curator at the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica, Spain (2006–2008), Cneai=, France (2015–2016), and artistic director of Contour 2013, 6th Biennial of Moving Image, Belgium (2012–2013).

Commissioner: Arts Council Korea

Curators: Jacob Fabricius, Seolhui Lee