Ainalaiyn Space and Three Highgate are proud to present Panopticon: The Unsettled Body, Nurbol Nurakhmet’s debut solo exhibition in London.

Nurbol Nurakhmet is a prominent painter from Central Asia who has developed his painting practice internationally. In Panopticon: The Unsettled Body, the artist expands the definition of space beyond its traditional understanding; not only situating his figures within interiors and landscapes but spaces of memory, the past, and political ideology. Working in large-scale painting, drawing and collage, Nurakhmet’s practice explores the poetics of inhabiting a body as a site for subjectivity, discipline and memory. His practice depicts the ways in which the human experience engages in an ever-changing dialogue with the spaces we inhabit.

Nurakhmet’s gestural handling of oil paints construct scenes of suspension; spaces feel timeless and bodies are unresolved. Swathes of bright colour produce a visual impasto resonant with Arshile Gorky or Lee Krasner, creating paintings that not only convey the experiences of inhabiting a body, but capture the results of the artist’s body in direct relation to the canvas.

Documenting the presence and movement of a body is dominant within these new works, but it is the political implications of these observations that have informed this exhibition’s title. In the eighteenth-century, English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham first introduced the concept of the panopticon, a prison in which a central watch tower is surrounded by a circle of cells. While the inmates cannot see into the tower, the guards are granted unlimited surveillance of each cell. This imbalance of access creates uncertainty for the inmates, as they must anticipate being observed at all times. The panopticon was never actualised but instead symbolised an ideology of discipline manifested through the threat of constant surveillance, which Bentham believed had the ability to dramatically alter and regulate society. It is this understanding of the profound impact of our environments on our human experience which has shaped this new body of work.

The works included in Panopticon: The Unsettled Body are deeply rooted in the history of painting – encompassing the atmospheric scenes of Vermeer and the impactful mark-making of Krasner – this body of works combines the world building of old masters with the visceral handling of paint from more contemporary painting movements. Within this exhibition, Nurakhmet illustrates figures that are complex, unresolved and constantly becoming, demonstrating the body’s dialogue with the physical, psychic and political spaces in which it resides.