BTS helps launch global art project featuring work by famous artists including Antony Gormley
- After conquering the pop universe, K-pop boy band BTS has unveiled a modern art initiative: ‘Connect, BTS’
- The group has teamed up with artists to help forge exhibitions going on display in five cities across four continents
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South Korean pop superstars BTS helped launch a global public art project in London on Tuesday inspired by their message of inclusivity and involving renowned artists including Antony Gormley and Tomas Saraceno.
The group has teamed up with an array of artistic talent from around the world to help forge a series of contemporary exhibitions going on display in five cities across four continents.
The project – “Connect, BTS” – used the boy band’s support for “diversity, love and care for the periphery” as the starting point for the series of disparate multidisciplinary artworks.
“We’re very excited and really happy to be part of this project,” said band member RM, real name Kim Nam-joon, at a launch event at London’s Serpentine Galleries, where one of the exhibitions was unveiled.
BTS, the first K-pop group to top charts in the US and Britain, has seen its global profile surge in recent years. They completed a lucrative world tour in 2019 before performing in New York’s Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
The musicians, all in their 20s, have built a predominantly youthful fan base on a message of self-acceptance and tolerance. The curators of Connect, BTS hope to tap into their huge online profile and tens of millions of followers on social media sites like Instagram and Twitter.
“This project will encourage appreciation of diversities and establish ground for great new synergies to be born,” said the project’s art director Lee Dae-hyung.
The various artworks will go on show in the South Korean and British capitals, as well as in Berlin in Germany, Argentina’s Buenos Aires and New York.
The London offering, Catharsis, by Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen, features an audiovisual simulation of a reimagined old-growth forest portrayed in a single continuous camera shot. It can be seen at the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park until March 15.
“This is a really wonderful example of, in a way, people jumping out of their silos and in a sense making something that could just be an idea a reality,” Gormley said.
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Berlin’s Gropius Bau venue will host a series of performance works by more than 17 international artists from Wednesday until February 2.
Buenos Aires is set to showcase Argentine artist Saraceno’s “synthesis of art, science and environmental activism” from January 21 for two months.
Meanwhile, two works will be unveiled in Seoul at the city’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza between January 28 and March 20.
