Yuz Project Room is an independent exhibition program, which invites artists to make site-specific artworks and project, boldly engaged with the museum, its surroundings and the audiences, aiming to explore the possibilities in contemporary art, and focus on the ideology and semantics in the present culture and society. Continuouing with its opening in September 2015, Yuz Project Room presents Koo Jeong A’s project Enigma of Beginnings from March 26th, 2016 to May 29th, 2016.

Since the 1990s, Koo Jeong A has been working on the reinvention of spaces with site specific works. Koo Jeong A has made works that are seemingly casual and commonplace, yet at the same time remarkably precise, deliberate, and considered, changing our perception of the world around us with subtle variations. Her reflections on the senses incorporate space, objects, images and sensory elements within site-specific environments. Over the years, her attention on everything on earth, her utilization and interaction with nature livings are presented in varieties of her art practice, ranging from the architectural elements to painting, installation, fiction, poetry, sculpture, video, sound, publications, and architecture projects, etc. To venture near Koo Jeong A’s work is to travel unreservedly through unexpected amazing cosmos, mysterious dwarfed spaces, and deja-vu landscape of memories.

This Project Room exhibition at Yuz Museum, Enigma of Beginnings seeks to provide a point of penetration of the many paths that the artist’s work is exploring. Koo will dramatically alter the whole space installing a fluorescent pink floor, Untitled (2012). Upon arrival in the space, it seems to be filled with the dazzling color as the lights will reflect on the walls. Once your eyes adjust to the intense color, it is possible to focus on the blue ink on paper drawings hung around the room. By closely inspecting and observing, the slender lines and intricate images of the cartoony drawings gradually become more visible and distinct. It is like a photographic diary of Koo’s daily life and imaginary world: “cliff and pond, a bestiary of mice, nudes in yoga position, organic forms like aquatic plants and stones, anthropomorphic organs, individuals communicating with each other, outlines of unknown landscapes and creatures.” Framed with the pink light, the drawings are quiet and humorous, simple and endearing.

It seems that the space is empty but only immersed by intense color, which leads to emptiness and void. Then when you spend some time in the space, intermittently one of the walls suddenly shakes and trembles as if the building is shivering, as if the building is alive. Like the name of the artwork Its Soul (2012), the building seems to have its own soul, trying to prove its existence by shaking, as if the building is communicating with the audience. Koo’s work is minimal and unostentatious with subtle changes, allows the audience to slow down and engage all the senses to experience the unperceived whole new world.

About the Artist

Koo Jeong A was born in Seoul, Keorea in 1985. She currently lives and the works in everyday. Her major exhibitions include: 4.3.3 (Pinksummer, Genoa, 2016); Everton Park Wheels Park project (Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, 2015); Annual Journey (Pilar Corrias, London, 2015); recto/verso(Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris, 2015); The World in 2015 (UCCA, Beijing, 2015); VOID WITHIN UNLIMITED FREEDOM (Base / Progetti per l’arte, Florence, 2014); Oussser (Fondazione La Raia, Novi Ligure, 2014); Shining Living (Yvonne Lamber, Paris, 2014); Burning Down the House (Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, 2014); A stroll through a fun palace (Swiss Pavilion at 14th Architecture Biennale, Venice, 2014); Koo Jeong A: 16:0 (Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf, 2012); OTRO (Ile de Vassivière, région Limousin, 2012); navigation without numbers (Pilar Corrias, London, 2012); Koo Jeong A: Constellation Congress (Dia at the Hispanic Society, New York, 2010); 53rd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, Venice; Flash Cube(Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, 2007); Koo Jeong-A (Centre Pompidou, Espace 315, Paris, 2004); Hugo Boss Prize (Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2002).

About Yuz Project Room

Yuz Project Room is a new independent exhibition program at the Yuz Museum which opens to the public in September 2015. Yuz Project Room invites artists to make site-specific works or projects, engaging boldly with the museum, its surroundings and its audience. Combining “project + exhibition,” the artist interacts actively with the space and aims to present the moment when contemporary art occurs.

About the Project

Date: March 26th – May 29th, 2016

Venue: Yuz Museum

Courtesy of the artist and Yuz Museum, for further information please visit www.yuzmshanghai.org.