穿越于以多姿多彩的图案拼凑而成的景致中，主人公是扛着黑白旗的小女孩，带着我们游走于艺术家口田真纪的梦境。梦境展现了艺术家的自身经历，从日本到中国、斯里兰卡以及亚洲的其他地区，她所遇到的自然景色和邂逅的人，被层层融入这些魔幻般的图案中。这些图案初看像是受北欧纺织物启发而成的布块拼贴花样，又像在中东地毯上可以找到的某些图案。然而这一梦幻之旅的风景追随着小女孩旅行叙事而铺展，出发于一片茂盛的森林，直到走出边缘开始看到城市建筑，到达被一片幽暗的花朵所隐藏的湖，或是在深谷中的一棵树下稍作休息，主人公的孤独旅行到达了一片黑暗中，未知的物体被相似的意喻般的图案和拼贴所覆盖。终于，旅游者的脸在她决定踏入这片未知时被展现。最终向观者表现的是用色彩条纹所描绘出的一张纤弱精巧的脸，其错综复杂可与包围着她的拼凑图案相比。

作品系列《存在于她的我，存在于我的她》中，口田真纪在绢上用颜色描绘肖像，图像的流动性展现于丝绸的脆弱性，艺术家似乎在暗示着，犹如生活的脆弱和短暂。生命对所有众生来说，就像一段旅程，是自我发现未知的旅行。这段旅程所曾历经的风景，带来了冒险和复杂，愉悦和险恶的遭遇。这些经历和遭遇组成并促成了现在的我们，尽管被错综复杂的知识和智慧所掩盖、保护、充实着，我们的脸依然脆弱善变。

口田真纪毕业于东京造型大学油画系，2005年来到中央美术学院学习，主修中国花鸟画和中国画材料。艺术家在其新作品《梦的声明》系列中采用了油画和中国国画的技艺，尤其是国画中的工笔画法。此外，在对国画的理解基础上， 艺术家发展出一种色彩表现技法，在丝绸画布的两面都运用颜色来达到原本无法实现的色调和层次。

思莱德画廊诚邀您参加口田真纪个展，体验她的生命之旅，穿越这些令人喜爱的自我发现和认识世界的梦境。展览的主要作品是艺术家自2005年以来一直在实验和发现创作的绘画系列。

——贺潇

Traversing through landscapes of pastiche of colorful patterns let by the protagonist – a little girl carrying a black and white flag – with whom we journey through the dreamscape of artist Kuchida Maki. A dreamscape projecting the artist’s own experience of traveling from Japan to China to Sri Lanka and other parts of Asia, her encounters of natural sceneries and people, are layered into these conjured patterns. At first sight, they may seem like a collage of fabric pattern blocks inspired by Northern European textile, or even patterns found in certain the Middle Eastern carpets. Yet the landscapes of this dream journey follow the narrative of the little girl’s travel, setting out from a lush forest, to its periphery where urban architectures are at sight, to the hidden lake gated by gloomy flowers, or resting under a tree in the deep valley, the protagonist’s lonely travel arrives at the darkness of unknown bodies blanketed with similar tropes of patterns and pastiches. Eventually the face of the traveler is revealed once she decides to step into the unknown. What is revealed to the viewers in the end, is a fragile of face depicted with color ripples that are comparable to the complexity of the pastiche of patterns enwrapping her.

In Kuchida’s series, I exist in her, as she exists in me, the portraits are again, rendered in color on silk where the fluidity of the image projects onto the fragility of the silk – as life itself, fragile and transient - the artist seems to suggest. Life, like a journey, for all sentient beings, is a self-discovering journey into the unknown. Its passing landscapes in which this journey traverses offer adventures and complexity with endearing or threatening encounters. These experiences and encounters constitute and contribute to the person we become in the present, blanketed, shielded and enriched with a complexity and multiplicity of knowledge and wisdom, yet, our faces remain fragile and fluid.

Kuchida Maki, trained in oil painting at Tokyo Zoukei University, and came to study at the Central Academy of Fine art in 2005, majoring in Chinese landscape painting. In her new series Proclaimed Dreams, the artist adopted techniques of oil painting and Chinese landscape paintings, in particular, the techniques of gongbi,, traditionally used to render realistic depictions in Chinese painting techniques. Moreover, based on her knowledge of these painting traditions, the artist developed a technique of color rendition that involves applying colors on both sides of the silk canvas to achieve color schemes and gradations that are impossible to realize otherwise.

Thread Gallery is pleased to invite you to the Solo Exhibition of Kuchida Maki, and experience her journey of life traversing through these dreamscapes of endearing self-discovery and of the world. This body of artworks are series of paintings the artist has been experimenting and discovering from 2005 to the present.

——Fiona He