Zachęta National Gallery of Art

curator: Hanna Wróblewska
exhibition design: Jarosław Kozakiewicz
artists: Harun Farocki, Mona Hatoum, Rem Koolhaas, Jarosław Kozakiewicz, Langlands & Bell, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Markus Schinwald, Artur Żmijewski

The Panopticon — Bentham's project recalled in the exhibition's title — has become a kind of metaphor today relating not only to prison architecture, but also, or perhaps above all, to the society of surveillance. Bentham's Panopticon was supposed to be the architecture of absolute control, a certain and essential element in rehabilitaion. The architectural system of surveillance has been replaced today by an electronic one, functioning equally efficiently beyond four (or three?) closed walls. Prison has lost its architectural materiality, becoming a frame within which a drama is performed. It is a drama of tragedy and human passions, a drama of guilt and punishment, a drama in which we want to see a metaphor of the dominant system: that of social order. Prison is a theme for screenplay as well as stage design, attracting artists and audiences with its visual content and emotional tones.