ZURICH.- On view this January at Hauser & Wirth’s Limmatstrasse gallery in Zurich is an exhibition of new sculptures, phosphorescent paintings and recent drawings by KOO JEONG A. The exhibition, titled KANGSE X, is derived from the Korean term KANGSE (meaning spatial strength) and is an extension of KOO JEONG A’s previous exhibition ‘ODORAMA CITIES’, presented at the Korean Pavilion for the 60th Venice Biennale, which originated from the artitst’s animation MYSTERIOUSSS (2017).

KOO’s multifaceted practice encompasses drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, film, animation, augmented reality and architecture, combined with natural phenomena such as gravity, electromagnetic fields and phosphorescence to open up alternative realities in both a geographic and an astral sense. Coinciding with the artist’s solo exhibition ‘LAND OF OUSSS [GRAVITTA]’ at Kunsthaus Bregenz, the exhibition in Zurich develops KOO’s longstanding exploration of the perception of space and traces the poetry that permeates the artist’s unique universe.

The exhibition showcases a series of new bronze sculptures depicting the embryonic figure of Kangse, balancing on a single toe. A recurring character in KOO’s sculptures, animations and drawings and a prominent feature of their presentation at the Korean Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale and the recent exhibition at Luma Arles. Kangse is often found floating through an infinite cosmic void, at once mysterious and mischievous. Set within an interstellar vacuum, the work unfolds through a speculative hand-language referencing the abstract structure of a Diophantine equation and Fermat’s Last Theorem.

Ideas of weightlessness are central to KOO’s practice, intimately connected to their explorations of immateriality and multidimensionality. Another sculpture, ‘DENSITY X’ (2025), is suspended in a magnetic field. It represents the latest installment in a long-running series that works to disrupt conventional notions of space and materiality using a levitating ice cube that KOO has materialized variously through drawing, sculpture and augmented reality. ‘LAVA X’ (2025), meanwhile, emits scent to immerse the viewer in a multisensory experience. Fragrance has been central to KOO’s practice since 1996, used by the artist to explore the ways in which spatial perception is influenced by olfactory experiences.

Alongside scent, KOO JEONG A’s work frequently incorporates other intangible elements such as light, temperature and sound. At the heart of KOO’s work is an interest in the invisible forces that shape reality, often bridging the terrestrial and the cosmic worlds. Light waves are bent by gravity, while plants bloom in response to light. Named after the classical planets—the Sun and Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn— the Seven Stars series embodies this entanglement. During daylight hours, these paintings appear quiet, minimalistic compositions. Darkness transforms them, revealing them to be painted using phosphorescent pigment that absorbs light over the course of the day. Glowing green stars appear across the canvases, opening a portal into a parallel dimension and forming what the artist coins as the LAND OF OUSSS, a cosmology in which animation, mathematics, and spatial imagination converge into a living monument.