SEOUL.- Koo Jeong A—Odorama Cities at the Korean Pavilion, the 60th Venice Biennale opens its homecoming exhibition at ARKO Art Center in Seoul, South Korea. Curated by Seolhui Lee & Jacob Fabricius.
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 pieces.
Among the artist’s many approaches, one of the recurring themes is scent. Scents and odors have been vital to their practice since 1996, when Koo, as a very young artist, produced the scent Pullover’s Wardrobe in a tiny closet at their Paris studio. Later, Koo made larger scent experiences like PAUSE at the Gwangju Biennale (South Korea, 2002), Dreams & Thoughts at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo (Japan, 2003), Untitled at the Casino Luxembourg (2005), 50 Moons of Saturn at the Turin Triennale (Italy, 2008), Constellation Congress at the Dia Art Foundation in New York (USA, 2010), ODORAMA at the disused Jubilee Line platform at Charing Cross Underground station in London (UK, 2016), and most recently Odor, Immaterial Sculptures at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen (Germany, 2022).
Thus, engaging with fragrances marks a natural artistic progression, and Koo’s enduring fascination and experience with scents culminated in the Korean scent project Odorama Cities. Within an exploration of the essence of scent, the very inhalation and exhalation of molecules seamlessly connected with other prominent interests in Koo’s art such as immaterialism, weightlessness, endlessness, and levitation.
The homecoming exhibition Koo Jeong A—Odorama Cities at ARKO Art Center in Seoul focuses on the individual stories and ‘scents memories,’ collected through an open call process made from June 25 to September 30, 2023. The team behind the Korean Pavilion reached out to Koreans and non-Koreans alike—anyone with a relationship to Korea – and asked the question: “What is your scent memory of Korea?” The open call for Odorama Cities aimed at creating a scent portrait of the Korean peninsula generated more than 600 unique written statements. Some memories are long personal tales, while others are common and generic descriptions from Korea, boiled down to a sentence or even one word. The exhibition at ARKO Art Center offers the viewer an exceptional possibility to read all the collected scent stories in Gallery 1.
Together with Koo Jeong A, 16 international acclaimed perfumers, armed with these open call stories, took on the task of interpreting and creating the 17 distinct Korean scent experiences: City Scent, Night Air, Scent of People, Smell of Seoul, Salty Smell, Scent of Siebold’s Magnolia, Smell of Sunlight, Fog, Smell of Tree, Jangdokdae, Smell of Rice, Smell of Firewood, Grandparents’ House, Fish Market, Public Bath, Old Electronics, and last but not least Odorama Cities. All the scents are being displayed in the Gallery 2.
