A K-Pop Boy Band Is Launching a Wildly Ambitious Public Art Project in Five Cities Across the World

The boy band and global K-Pop
sensation BTS is now a public art patron. The group is behind a
major commission of 22 artists due to be unveiled in New York,
Berlin, Buenos Aires, and Seoul. The unprecedented initiative,
dubbed “CONNECT, BTS” launches in London today with the
presentation of a digital artwork at the Serpentine
Galleries.

Artists involved in the
commissions include Antony Gormley, Ann Veronica Janssens,
and Tomás Saraceno, among many others. The group has also
enlisted the help of leading curators in the five cities, including
the Serpentine’s artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist and Stephanie
Rosenthal, the director of Berlin’s Gropius Bau.

The projects will be
under the overall artistic
direction of the Korean curator Daehyung Lee. Each project will
also be extensively documented online, including introductory
videos to the works recorded by BTS. The group describes its role
as “Secret
Docents.”

“It is a great honor to
participate in CONNECT, BTS with such renowned artists and curators
from all over the world,” the boy band says in a statement. “This
project is especially meaningful to us because it truly represents
diversity and creates a collective, positive message for the world
that we value. Through this project, we hope to return the great
amount of love and support from our fans, ARMY, and all
audiences.”

The ambitious project’s artistic
director says in a statement: “BTS’s philosophy in the form of
support for diversity, and love and care for the periphery is an
important motif of the project.” Daehyung Lee adds that art,
“whether it consists of sound, sculpture, photography, or another
medium,” has the potential “to forge a relationship between artist,
viewer, the immediate environment, and the atmosphere which
encircles and extends far beyond.”

Here is everything you need to
know about the contemporary art-meets-K-Pop commissions.

LONDON

What: The new work
by New York-based, Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen called
Catharsis is a digital simulation of a re-imagined
“old-growth” forest. The simulated landscape is set up as a single
continuous shot panning from the roots to the canopy of an
ancient forest.

Where: The Serpentine
Galleries, London, or online at catharsis.live

When: January 14–March
15

BERLIN

What: The Gropius Bau’s Stephanie Rosenthal and Noémie Solomon are
co-curating a series of performance works by more than 17
international artists. Called “Rituals of Care,” the program will range from works of
experimental choreography and healing ceremonies to sonic
environments. The aim is to “explore the necessary conditions for coming
together and tending to environments, to physical and spiritual
worlds and to other beings.”
Featured artists include Jelili Atiku, boychild with Josh Johnson and
Total Freedom, Cevdet Erek, Marcelo Evelin, Bill Fontana, Maria
Hassabi, Mette Ingvartsen with Will Guthrie, Baba Murah and
Candomblé Berlin, Antonija Livingstone and Nadia Lauro with Mich
Cota, Kennis Hawkins and Stephen Thompson.

Where: Gropius Bau,
Berlin

When: January 15–February
2

SALINAS GRANDES AND BUENOS
AIRES

What: In solidarity with
the indigenous communities of Argentina’s great salt lake, Salinas
Grandes, the Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno is presenting a
project titled Fly with
Aerocene Pacha. The land
of Salinas Grande is at increasingly threatened by mining for
lithium, which is a raw material in batteries. Combining art,
science, and environmental activism, Saraceno aims to set new world
records by send a human being floating into the sky without fossil
fuels, solar panels, batteries, or helium, but powered only by “the
sun and air we breathe.” A film of the happening will be shown in
Buenos Aires.

Where: Buenos Aires,
Argentina, and on Instagram, and online

When: January 21–March
22

SEOUL

What: Two major
exhibitions will be shown in a public plaza in Seoul designed by
the late Zaha Hadid. The Brussels-based, British artist Ann
Veronica Janssens will present a disorienting sensory environment
created with colored artificial mist titled Green, Yellow, Pink. The
Koran artist Yiyun Kang will present a large-scale digital work
using projection mapping that reimagines some of BTS’s signature
dance moves.

Where: Dongdaemun Design
Plaza, Seoul, South Korea

When: January 28–March
20

NEW YORK

What: The British
sculptor Antony Gormley will create a vast “drawing in space”
titled New York
Clearing (2020). The
work will be formed by an 11-mile-long single line of square
aluminum tubing, which will loop and coil without beginning or end.
The swooping work aims to provide a foil to the Modernist grid of
the city. 

Where: Brooklyn Bridge
Park Pier 3, New York

When: February 4–March
27

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Public Art Project in Five Cities Across the World appeared
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