Derek Boshier’s second ERC-721 token is drawn from his series K-Pop and created in collaboration with digital artist Shapeshifter7. Inspired by South Korean singing television contest King of Mask Singer – whose participants’ identities are only revealed when eliminated – the ERC-721 token depicts cartoon-like figures. The canvas set against the wall provides a clear link to the work’s roots as a painting, now brought to life through animation. Kellogg’s iconic “K” is playfully used as a signifier for both Korean pop music and American consumerism. The work nods to the TV show’s increasingly popular global franchise, highlighting aspects of cultural appropriation and universalist aspirations. For Boshier, these inherent elements of deception, mystery, and audience participation mirror the political landscape of the post-Trump era. The K-pop series that inspired this ERC-721 token debuted for the first time at a Gazelli Art House exhibition in London in October 2021.

Derek Boshier is an English artist, among the first proponents of British pop art. Together with fellow students David Hockney, Allen Jones, Peter Philips and R B Kitaj, he participated in the landmark 1962 Young Contemporaries exhibition that brought Pop Art to the attention of the wider public His contribution to that scene was a strong satirical edge, which distinguished his work from his contemporaries.

He works in various media including painting, drawing, collage, and sculpture. In the 1970s he shifted from painting to photography, film, video, assemblage, and installations, but he returned to painting by the end of the decade. Addressing the question of what shapes his work, Boshier once stated “Most important is life itself, my sources tend to be current events, personal events, social and political situations, and a sense of place and places”.

Boshier’s work has appeared in many museum exhibitions, including at the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Tate Britain and British Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Centre Pompidou. In recent years Boshier was the recipient of the Honorary Fellowship of the RCA (2016) as well as the Guggenheim fellowship and NEA award for the arts, he is also an accomplished teacher and lecturer. He lives and works in Los Angeles.