Existence is a squared-in concept. First, the sedentary lifestyle: we’re expected to be predictable and all lead the same structural life. This stems from our default fallacy to compartmentalise, to populate boxes with matter and stay within the collective. Boundaries and structures have never been of importance to KOO JEONG A (b. 1967, KR), who steadfastly refuses the hamster wheel.

Artist biographies and digital blue prints all read the same – KOO lives and works everywhere. Since the early 1990s, their practice has focused on this intangibility, with actual substance relegated to bystanders of the magnetic fields surrounding a piece. It’s a sensorial conversation that addresses the hidden frequencies nesting within our compounds, urging viewers to consider the limits of their own visual register. Scent is a leading vehicle throughout their work. KOO’s breakthrough, Pullover’s Wardrobe (1996), saw visitors enter a small Parisian studio scented with strategically placed mothballs evoking “grandmother’s cupboard.” Thirty years later, the piece feels equally refreshing, particularly knowing that the olfactory viewed through an artistic lens rarely ventures beyond the “nice”. Scent is almost expected to add a pleasant layer to our constructed notions, still reinforcing the narrow frames through which we experience the world.

OUSSEAN, KOO’s first major solo show in Germany, brings audiences back to their fictional territory, Ousss. It is the epitome of temporality, with works inhabiting the in-between, almost hidden in their modesty. Glow-in-the-dark stars that framed countless childhood ceilings become markers of this almost magical sensorial power. Seven Stars, named after the classical celestial lineage, sees planets disappear and reappear as lights dim, eventually switching off entirely in cyclical rhythm. Resonance (2006/2026) applies a similar treatment to a skatepark, its phosphorescent pigments allowing it to operate incognito depending on the light. Beneath the ordinary, there is always an alternative: a sphere that rejects striated vision.

It’s another showcase of KOO JEONG A’s nomadic philosophy, one that runs parallel to the pursuit of fluidity. Their delicate use of invisible assemblage offers a first-hand encounter with something otherworldly, circling the magic that occurs between visibility and invisibility: the scent that lingers, the sound waves populating a space. It’s a case of everything and nothing, all at once. Landscapes that register as nothing to those confined to the everyday become almost overpopulated with ecological data to those equally nomadic, or at least open-minded enough to look.