[Gallery Walk] Fifty-Seven Pencil Leads Are More Precarious Than Six Tons of Steel... What Gu Jungah Hid at Leeum

Gu Jungah’s Largest Solo Show in Korea at Leeum Museum: “Usumos”
A World That Exists Even When Unseen; Missing and Seeing, Both Matter
"To See Is to Know"… Shifting Viewership from “Confirmation” to “Discovery”

On the rainy 31st, I gazed out the window of the Leeum Museum of Art for quite some time. They say there are 50 crystals embedded between the gabion retaining walls, but they were nearly impossible to spot. Only after weaving through the dark stones and sharply angling my gaze did I finally catch a glimmer of light. This is Gu Jungah's "Reality Upgrade & End Alone." The work only reveals itself when the viewer's location, the angle of the sun, and the weather all align. It's perfectly fine to just walk past without noticing it; in fact, missing it is itself part of the work's intention.

At Gu Jungah's new work 'Mobius'. Attendees are viewing the exhibition at Gu Jungah's solo exhibition 'Gu Jungah: Usmos' held on the 31st at the Leeum Museum of Art in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. Photo by Yonhap News

Gu Jungah's (age 59) solo exhibition, "Usumos," continuously unsettles the viewer's sense of certainty in this way. The familiar way of finding a piece, reading the description, understanding it, and then moving on does not work here. Among the white porcelain ceramics, a single small stone floats in a magnetic field, and the scent emanates from a piece of wood and spreads throughout the gallery. Some works appear completely different depending on whether it is light or dark. For Gu Jungah, light, scent, sound, gravity, and magnetism are not merely effects surrounding the piece, but the very substance of the work itself.

The first thing that catches the eye in the M2 basement is Gu Jungah's new piece, "Möbius," created specifically for Leeum. This stainless steel structure is 8 meters wide and, from up close, resembles a twisted tunnel; viewed from above, it forms the infinity (∞) symbol. But strangely enough, what draws the eye even more than the enormous steel is a work from 1998 hidden on the adjacent wall: 57 mechanical pencil leads delicately upright without any adhesive. They look as if they might collapse with the slightest brush of a fingertip. Despite the gulf of decades between them, these two works, utterly different in scale and material, both interrogate gravity, balance, and precariousness. Is it solidity that comes with size? Is fragility a matter of smallness?

The artwork "Gravita" is exhibited at the Gu Jeonga solo exhibition 'Gu Jeonga: Usmos' held on the 31st at Leeum Museum of Art in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. Photo by Yonhap News

This is what sets this exhibition apart from a typical retrospective. Although it brings together 35 works ranging from the early 1990s to new creations made this year, it does not chronologically explain the "progress" of the pieces. Early small and seemingly insignificant objects are mixed together with monumental recent sculptures, illuminating the persistent questions that have remained unchanged for 30 years. It is an attitude that focuses less on visible forms and more on unseen forces, and on the fleeting moment when objects form relationships with each other rather than on finished shapes. The exhibition's title, "OUSSSMOS," is itself a portmanteau of the artist's own invented word from the 1990s, "OUSSS," and the word "cosmos." It’s a universe that resists being fixed to any single meaning. From the outset, there is no intention to be accommodating; the exhibition gently encourages you to keep looking, even in uncertainty.

The "R" floor one level above demonstrates Gu Jungah's playful approach even further. For the first time, all 1,001 drawings created since 2005 and 77 wooden boxes containing them are brought together in one exhibition. However, not all 1,001 drawings are displayed at once. Only a selection is hung on the wall at any given time, while the rest remain inside the boxes. The pieces on display also rotate over the course of the exhibition. Although it's called a "full archive presentation," no visitor can see all the works at once. Here, not showing everything isn't an absence, but a defining condition of the work itself.

On the 31st, attendees at Gu Jeonga's solo exhibition "Gu Jeonga: Usumos" held at the Leeum Museum of Art in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, are examining drawing works stored in a box. Photo by Yonhap News

This unfamiliar approach is nothing new for Gu Jungah. In her early exhibitions, everyday objects were placed so nonchalantly that viewers sometimes failed to recognize them as art. This time at Leeum, only the scale has changed. There is even a glowing skatepark structure weighing nearly 6 tons. The fact that an artist who has always pursued the unseen and the trivial now presents such large-scale spectacle at one of Korea's top art museums is a clear paradox.

Yet, what makes the exhibition compelling is that these massive works once again turn our attention to the small things. After glimpsing "Möbius," you notice the mechanical pencil leads; after passing the luminous structure, you find yourself squinting to spot a single crystal outside the window.

On this day, Gu Jungah said, "I believe to see is to know." At "Usumos," that statement is intriguingly inverted. As you wander the loosely intertwined gallery—works linked by light and fragrance, ancient artifacts beside freshly placed sculptures—you often realize much later what you truly saw, rather than in the moment itself.

Artist Jungah Koo is answering questions at a press conference for her solo exhibition "Jungah Koo: Oosmose" held on the 31st at the Leeum Museum of Art in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. Photo by Yonhap News.

So, what stays with you most after leaving the exhibition might not be the six-ton steel structure. It could be the one elusive crystal you never managed to find, a stone overlooked in passing, or something you didn’t initially recognize as art. Gu Jungah has filled Leeum with 35 works. In the end, "Usumos" asks not so much what you saw, as what you saw but ultimately missed.

"Gu Jungah: Usumos" will run from September 5 to December 27 at Leeum Museum of Art's M2 space, the lobby, and the permanent exhibition hall for antiquities (M1). Featuring around 35 pieces, from Gu's earliest works from the 1990s to new commissions for Leeum, this is the largest solo museum exhibition of her career in Korea.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.