KENBO (Liang Guojian): ā á ǎ à

ā—What is this? 
á—What on earth are you talking about?
ǎ—Ah, oh… I think I get it.
à—Well, now you know that’s art!*

The exhibition by KENBO (Liang Guojian) presents a comprehensive overview of the Chinese artist’s practice, while creating a deliberate dialogue between Eastern and Western traditions—not only through artistic methods, but also through philosophical reflection and social engagement.

KENBO was born in 1973 during the Cultural Revolution—one of the most destructive periods for art in history. He grew up in rural southern China (Foshan, Guangdong Province). From an early age he was trained in traditional Chinese painting and educated in his ancestral home. Due to his mature attitude and passion for classical literature and history, his classmates nicknamed him “KENBO” (“Old Ken”) when he was only seventeen years old. The nickname later became his artistic alias. His work spans multiple disciplines, including design, art books, experimental ink painting, installation, performance, video, and sound art.

Since 2007, KENBO has traveled and studied abroad in Europe and China, continually exploring and absorbing the differences and connections between Eastern and Western cultures. He combines traditional Chinese ink painting on rice paper with Chan culture (from which Japanese Zen originates), creating a unique and deeply personal painterly language. In addition, KENBO is actively engaged in community-building efforts, takes part in rural revitalization projects, and is involved in collecting and publishing local historical and cultural materials. “I carry countless questions about the world, and art provides the language through which I pose them—an intuitive reaction, sharp and surprising like the fourth tone in Mandarin,” says the artist.

The exhibition evolves as a journey through successive stages of the artist’s life and practice, unfolding like chapters in a book. It begins with paintings from the artist’s earliest travels to Europe and works from various creative periods that draw on the visual language of traditional painting, alongside sculptures, installations, and documentation of socially engaged performances. A significant part of the exhibition is devoted to books created by KENBO—from those traditionally presenting calligraphy and painting derived from it (shuhua tongyuan—“calligraphy and painting share the same origin”), to the most recent works, in which he consciously employs destruction and iconoclastic meanings, both in the context of memory, transience, and the ritual motif of burning, as well as the contemporary catastrophism of the declining Anthropocene era.

The exhibition concludes with a cycle of works on paper created daily over the 123 days of the exhibition, connecting the context of Szczecin with the artist’s origins, titled Oder River and Chinese Ink: A Record of an Irreversible and Variable State of Time.

*The titular ā á ǎ à is derived from the notation system of intonation marks placed over vowels, used to indicate pitch and tone in Hanyu Pinyin—the standard romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. The four sentences above represent an “unrestrained” interpretation of the ineffable nature of abstract art in the artist’s language. Using the four tones of Pinyin (ā, á, ǎ, à), they vividly illustrate the entire process of engaging with art: from the initial bewildered query (ā), to the confusion of attempting comprehension (á), followed by the dawning of apparent understanding (ǎ), and finally arriving at that moment of confirmed recognition and awe (à).

Curated by Stanisław Ruksza and Andrzej Wasilewski.