Anish Kapoor: Looking at the Deprived of Freedom—The Future of Surveillance Society
Thursday, 23/11/2023 - Sunday, 28/1/2024

Anish Kapoor:
Looking at
the Deprived
of Freedom—
The Future of Surveillance Society

While we were not looking, surveillance systems spread like a net throughout our streets and neighborhoods.
It is only now that we notice that the “birth of the prison” has emerged in invisible form,
and that we are subject to control and surveillance in today’s society.
The theme of this exhibition is how people under surveillance interpret artistic expressions.
Under the banner of utilitarianism and aspiring to “the greatest happiness of the greatest number,”
British philosopher Jeremy Bentham designed a prison, the Panopticon.
Michel Foucault then foresaw the present birth of the prison as a result of surveillance society,
emerging as the panoptic approach becomes pervasive.
This perspective provided the inspiration for an exhibition entitled “Looking at the Deprived of Freedom.”

Anish Kapoor’s works can touch upon emotions that underlay our more orderly daily existence.
In the shadow of surveillance, people are more contained
than ever within the parameters of compliance that the authoritative structures they live within impose.
Viewing Kapoor’s work however we are invited to experience something less rational and compliant,
the lost object or non-object of our desire, and all the affects this evokes.
This exhibition is structured to bring these more chaotic emotions into awareness.
In contemporary society, we are measured, without our knowledge,
against unseen gauges and subjected to routine surveillance,
creating homogenized identities adapted to a controlled society.
The spread of information technology has brought surveillance to everyday social interactions and
transactions through the data involved in social media and online shopping purchase records.
Unlike the world controlled by Big Brother, the individuals being watched are eager participants
in this system as well as the nations and corporations.

Kapoor’s mirror works reflect us back fragmented, and chaotic, confounding our perception of wholeness.
The destabilizing nature of these works is counter to the perceived wholeness
that is rendered even more extreme and alienating to us under the surveillance mechanisms of today’s society.
The exhibition proposes that Anish Kapoor’s art offers a space to think
about that which is hidden beneath the surface,
and that this space opens out the freedom to experience ourselves
and one another with greater truth and humanity.

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Takayo IidaCommentary for Anishi Kapoor exhibition

EXHIBITION
SPECIAL MOVIE

Exhibition commentary

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chapter Ⅰ

Birth of the Prison
Without a Ceiling

　While we were not looking, surveillance systems spread like a net throughout our streets and transportation systems. Moreover, the data gathering systems, still under construction, are gathering enormous amounts of digital data via our smartphones, internet connections, and social media. And we frequently see situations where personal information is exposed to public view and where individual freedoms are under threat. We are confronted by the issue of how to avoid the risks associated with convenience. Without doubt the “birth of the prison” has occurred, and the prison without a ceiling has emerged in invisible form. It is only now that we notice that in today’s society we are subject to control and surveillance. The theme of this exhibition is exploring how people under surveillance interpret artistic expressions, and the extent to which the innermost workings of our hearts and minds are reflected through Anish Kapoor’s works. Under the banner of utilitarianism (the advocation of economic efficiency) and aspiring to “the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” British philosopher Jeremy Bentham designed a prison, the Panopticon. Subsequently, Michel Foucault foresaw the birth of the prison in today’s society as a corollary of the inundation of society by surveillance, emerging as the panoptic approach becomes pervasive. This perspective provided the inspiration for an exhibition entitled “Anish Kapoor: Looking at the Deprived of Freedom—The Future of Surveillance Society.”

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chapter Ⅱ

Big Brother

　Anish Kapoor’s works can touch upon emotions that underlay our more orderly daily existence. In the shadow of surveillance, people are more than ever contained within the parameters of compliance that the authoritative structures they live within impose. Encountering Kapoor’s work, however, induces us to experience something less rational and compliant, the lost object or non-object of our desire, and all the affects this evokes. This exhibition is structured to bring into awareness the deepest memories that had been consigned to oblivion under the control of compliance, and the chaotic emotions that we have unconsciously built up layer after layer. In contemporary society, we are placed without our knowledge in unseen cages and subjected to routine surveillance, creating homogenized identities adapted to a controlled society. The spread of information technology has brought surveillance to everyday social interactions and transactions through the data tied to social media and online shopping purchase records. Unlike the world controlled by Big Brother in Geoge Orwell’s dystopian 1984, the individuals being watched are eager participants in this system, joining the nations and corporations.

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chapter Ⅲ

The Monster of Totality（✽1）

　Kapoor’s works reflect the innate emotions concealed deep inside us, fragmented and chaotic, confounding our recognition of the stratified whole. But along with the chaos, we may finally become aware, driven to notice that the monster of totality（✽1） that is indisputably perceptible in society under today’s surveillance mechanisms is in fact alienating us. The red paintings and objects with the appearance of lumps of flesh arrayed in the gallery momentarily destabilize their viewers, but at the same time they present an opportunity to reacquire recognition, however small, of freedoms that have been usurped in the relationship that we ourselves, based on our individual personalities, have with our society. These works imply the potential to recall the implicit memories sleeping deep inside each individual in an expansive society that has been encoded and channeled. At the exhibition venue, the installation of Kapoor’s uncertain objects, fragments, in-betweens, and dismemberments presents an unyielding process of formation and deformation. According to the artist, “Red is dark, it is of course blood but it has visceral depth. Red is its own poetic entity, mysterious as a sustainer of life and the stuff of death. Colour is never passive. I have always looked for colour that is a ‘condition’ not a surface. I want an immersion in colour much as one might be immersed in water. Colour expands space. It makes more space.… To make more space is my ambition. Colour makes new reality.”（✽2） He also states that “The art I love, the art I make, I hope, celebrates the sensual while always knowing that decay is close.”（✽3） The current exhibition, located on Omotesando, a place of great variety and diversity at the very center of the city’s hustle and bustle, provides an opportunity to stand face to face with Anish Kapoor’s works and discover a new self.

Notes
（✽1） Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, trans. Richard Howard
（London: Macmillan, 1977）
（✽2） Anish Kapoor, “ANISH KAPOOR: Blood and Light. In conversation with Julia Kristeva,” Anish Kapoor: Versailles
(Paris: RMN, 2015)
Red is dark, it is of course blood but it has visceral depth. Red is its own poetic entity, mysterious as a sustainer of
life and the stuff of death. Colour is never passive. I have always looked for colour that is a “condition” not a surface. I want an
immersion in colour much as one might be immersed in water. Colour expands space. It makes more space.… To make more
space is my ambition. Colour makes new reality.
（✽3） Ibid.
The art I love, the art I make, I hope, celebrates the sensual while always knowing that decay is close.

Profile

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Anish Kapoor

b. 1954 in Mumbai, India. moved to the UK in the 70's, is internationally renowned as one of Britain's leading contemporary artists. His sculptures created on the basis of concepts derived from philosophical ideas or mythical worlds are transforming the exhibition venue into an entirely different space. Assuming the nature of both real and surreal, they awaken primordial feelings that are sensual and awe-inspiring, and may suggest cosmological propositions to the viewer.

Atrium installation

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Artist Team COVA (Taketo Kobayashi, Hikaru Takata, Haruka Ohta) worked on this Interaction,
inspired by the concept behind the exhibition
"Anish Kapoor: Looking at the Deprived of Freedom— The Future of Surveillance Society."

Dedicated to the spirituality of Anish Kapoor
art work by : COVA (Taketo Kobayashi, Hikaru Takata, Haruka Ohta)