Young Projects will be spending the week playing “Match-Maker” in New York City, as the Brooklyn-based studio has debuted their interactive Valentine’s Day installation in the heart of Times Square. Made in collaboration with fabricator Kammetal, as part of Times Square Alliance’s sixth annual heart design competition, the interactive heart-shaped sculpture is designed to cosmically connect people based on their zodiac signs by arranging curious passerby's at twelve points surrounding the installation.
As Young Projects describes, “Peering through colorful, interwoven periscopes provides glimpses of each viewer's four most ideal astrological mates, offering potentially novel connections between lonely souls or settled lovers.”
“The form of the sculpture is elusive, complex and symmetrical, and changes as viewers experience it from different vantage points throughout Times Square. From many points of view it forms a perfect and iconic heart; from other perspectives the sculpture is tangled and perplexing.”
A perfect installation for a city that has been accused of keeping its dwellers single.
“Can a sculpture act as a dating service,” asked Tom Finkelpearl, Executive Director of Queens Museum and Selection Jury Member. “We will see. Even if not, Young Projects’ reinterpretation of the heart—not as a bodily organ but as a place for connection and romance—is refreshing and original.”
Visitors can follow the conversation and share their images with the installation on Twitter using #LoveTimesSquare. Match-Maker will remain on view through March 11th.
Previous winners of the Times Square Valentine Heart Design include: Situ Studio (2013); BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) (2012); Freecell (2011); Moorhead & Moorhead (2010); and Gage / Clemenceau Architects (2009).
This year’s Times Square Valentine Heart Design competition is made possible by theTimes Square Alliance and Van Alen Institute.
