In August 2025, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul, launched a new chapter in the convergence of technology and art. Titled 《Agamon Encyclopedia: Leaked Edition》, the exhibition marks the inaugural project of the ‘MMCA × LG OLED Series’, co-organized with LG Electronics. Through the intersecting themes of technology, life, and gender, TZUSOO’s work presents itself as both a contemporary experiment and a manifesto.

‘MMCA × LG OLED Series’: Toward a Sustainable Co-Evolution of Technology and Art

The ‘MMCA × LG OLED Series’ is a three-year collaborative initiative between LG Electronics and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), launched in 2025 to discover and support emerging media artists. Rather than using technology as a mere medium, the project seeks to explore how it can engage with the philosophical and sociocultural questions posed by contemporary art.

MMCA has consistently supported installation and video-based experimental projects through flexible venues like “Seoul Box” since the late 2010s, while LG has, in recent years, distinguished its brand through digital art projects featuring OLED technology in the global arena. This collaboration goes beyond sponsorship: it is being recognized as a new “creative ecosystem model” that offers both artistic freedom and technological infrastructure to artists.

In particular, LG contributed 97-inch OLED displays to enhance the immersive quality and subtle emotional detail of TZUSOO’s video installations. Curators describe this as a “structure where technology is in service of the artist’s worldview,” and post-exhibition acquisition of select works by MMCA is currently under discussion.


 
TZUSOO: An Artist Who Translates Vitality and Gender Through the Digital

Born in 1992, TZUSOO studied sculpture at Seoul National University and media art at the Universität der Künste Berlin. Now working between Berlin and Seoul, she is known for exploring layered themes such as gender, digital-native sensibility, and the aesthetics of life. Her practice often begins with the question of the “corporeality of digital existence.”

In her 2022 solo exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, she explored the sensory boundaries between humans and machines using bio-materials and interactive video. Since then, she has continued to expand her non-binary imagination through themes like “birth without the body” and “irrational life models based on gendered sensitivity.”

In 《Agamon Encyclopedia》, TZUSOO goes beyond physical representations of life to examine concepts of immaterial presence and digital persistence. The use of agar, moss, and digital spirit-beings in her works reflects her long-standing inquiry into the spectrum between “being alive” and “surviving.”


 
《Agamon Encyclopedia》: A Non-Natal Imagining of Life and Aesthetics of Circularity

《Agamon Encyclopedia: Leaked Edition》 consists of three main works.

The first is 〈Agamon 5〉 (2025), an organic sculpture in which moss is planted in agar gel. As a metaphor for life and desire, this piece explores motherhood and nurturing through an alternative reproductive framework. The artist describes it as “sexual energy expanding beyond childbirth,” reframing the slow growth process of moss into an act of life care.

The second and third pieces are large-scale two-channel video installations titled 〈Eight Spirits of Flesh – Tae〉 and 〈Eight Spirits of Flesh – Gan〉, presented on ultra-wide OLED screens. These videos construct a mythological narrative inhabited by digital lifeforms, each representing metaphors of organs or acts of birth. The OLED panels vividly capture the beings’ subtle gestures, translucent skin, and slow breathing, proving that technology can serve as a concrete medium for the artist’s philosophical vision.

These works go beyond the boundaries of traditional installation and video art, proposing a new “aesthetic of circularity” that merges biological materials with digital permanence. The interplay between sculpture and moving image creates a sensory temporality in the exhibition space—an approach increasingly central to contemporary artistic practices.



Expanding Sensibility Through Technology in Contemporary Art

《Agamon Encyclopedia》 is not simply about using technology as a tool, but rather about transforming it into a language of sensation and ethics. It represents the trajectory that contemporary art must pursue—one that redefines the boundaries of the body and reinterprets the concept of life through gender and technology. TZUSOO’s vision, combined with the precise imaging of LG’s OLED technology and MMCA’s bold curatorial experimentation, presents a compelling model of how far art can be expanded through technology.

As the ‘MMCA × LG OLED Series’ continues, one can only imagine what artistic visions lie ahead. Within this organic ecosystem where technology meets sensitivity, contemporary art may well rediscover its vital force.

References

• K-ARTIST.COM: TZUSOO Artist's Homepage