The Garden of Being

— Suzhou, 2026

I’m pleased to share the opening of my upcoming solo exhibition The Garden of Being at Unknown Journey Art Space, Banyan Tree Yangcheng Lake, Suzhou.

This exhibition builds directly from my recent residency at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai. That period allowed for a shift in the work — not just in output, but in thinking.

The central question became quite simple:

What happens when the photograph is no longer treated as an image, but as a condition?

The works in this exhibition extend photography into object and environment. Using UV printing on acrylic combined with hand heat-forming, the image is no longer flat. It bends, holds tension, and occupies space. It asks the viewer to move, not just look.

There is also a strong dialogue with Chinese landscape thinking, particularly shanshui traditions, where absence and atmosphere carry equal weight to form. This has deeply influenced how I approach both image construction and spatial experience.

Rather than presenting landscape as something external, these works attempt to situate the viewer within it — moving from observation to immersion.

This exhibition would not have been possible without the conversations and connections formed during my time in Shanghai, particularly those that opened new ways of thinking about image, material, and place.

If you are in Suzhou between 31 March and 25 May, I would be glad for you to experience it in person.

About

Bronisław Kózka

Bronisław Kózka is a contemporary photomedia artist, Hasselblad Master, and senior lecturer in photography at RMIT University. He works between Shanghai and Melbourne.

Kózka's practice is grounded in the relationship between landscape, perception, and technological mediation. His current work integrates LiDAR spatial scanning, AI-assisted image construction, and the production of sculptural photographic objects — large-scale works formed through UV printing on acrylic and heat-formed surfaces. These projects unfold through several interconnected series: Mountain Water (shanshui), the Garden Series, the Limen Series, and Digital Sediments — each exploring how digital and physical processes transform experience of landscape and place.

Central to his methodology is the concept of the Origin Image: a framework that begins with embodied encounters in the landscape and traces the layered processes through which images accumulate meaning. His engagement with Chinese shanshui aesthetics — the classical tradition of mountain and water landscape — forms a philosophical spine running through his recent practice.

Kózka has exhibited widely across Australia, China, Europe and Asia. He has been a curator of the Pingyao International Photography Festival since 2010, and has exhibited at West Bund Art & Design (Shanghai), the Grand Prix International de Photographie de Vevey (Broncolor Award), SIPF Singapore, Chobi Mela Bangladesh, and the Hanmi Museum of Photography, Seoul. His sculptural work has been presented at Sculpture by the Sea. His work is held in public and private collections internationally, and is published in the teNeues Hasselblad Masters Vol. 1.

 
 

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