Leeum Museum of Art opens ticket sales for Koo Jeong A's 'OUSSSMOS,' running Sept. 5-Dec. 27

A show built on things that don't hold still

Leeum Museum of Art has opened ticket sales for its next exhibition, and the artist at the center of it works with materials that are designed to change while nobody's looking. Pencil lead wears down. Aspirin powder and mothballs evaporate. Sugar cubes dissolve. That's the raw material list for Koo Jeong A, whose show "OUSSSMOS" (우스모스) opens at the museum on September 5 and runs through December 27, 2026.

Who Koo Jeong A is

Koo Jeong A was born in Seoul in 1967 and has lived in Paris since 1991, according to the museum's announcement. Over that time, she's built a body of work around the idea that an artwork doesn't have to be a fixed, finished object. Instead of carving or casting something permanent, she works with substances that are already in the process of disappearing — the kind of small, unstable materials most people wouldn't think to hang in a gallery.

Why the instability is the point

The museum frames time itself as the key material in Koo's practice, more than any single object on display. A work made from mothballs or sugar looks different depending on light and darkness, temperature and scent, and simply how long a visitor stands near it. The museum describes this as a way of making viewers notice parts of the world that usually go unnoticed — the show doesn't ask you to look at a finished piece so much as watch a piece finish itself, slowly, in front of you.

Practical details

Leeum announced the ticket opening through its official Instagram account, alongside the exhibition dates and title. The show runs at Leeum Museum of Art from September 5 to December 27, 2026, and is presented in partnership with Samsung Life Insurance. Graphic design for the exhibition comes from studiofrith, per the museum's credit line.

Editor's take

Most museum announcements lead with a name or a headline piece. Leeum led with a material list — pencil lead, aspirin, mothballs, sugar — and that's a smart bet for an international audience that may not know Koo Jeong A by name but will remember an artwork engineered to dissolve during its own run. It also fits a pattern in how Seoul's museums have been marketing fall shows this year: less about a single marquee object, more about an experience that changes if you show up on a different day.

For visitors weighing whether to build a trip around this, the calendar gives you room — a nearly four-month run means there's no rush, but it also means the piece you see in September may not be the piece someone sees in December. If ephemeral, process-based art interests you, that's the actual selling point here, not a wall label. Watch for how the museum documents the show's changes over its run, since a piece designed to wear away invites exactly that kind of before-and-after record.