Fukumi Sukigara － Double Forest

2026.9.26 – 10.31

Kenji Taki Gallery Nagoya is pleased to present Double Forest, a solo exhibition by Fukumi Sukigara, opening on Saturday, September 26.

At first glance, Sukigara’s works evoke an otherworldly realm reminiscent of abstract painting or Surrealism, yet upon closer inspection, concrete images such as plants and figures begin to emerge. This unique world stems from her exploration of a fundamental quality of painting—depicting something non-flat on a flat surface—through physical action.

Moving her hands as if ‘cultivating’ the canvas, Sukigara draws lines and apply layers of paint. She brings together disparate spaces and images—the reality and the subconscious, the far and the near—on a single picture plane, cutting and splicing them together to create complex layers across the flat surface.

The richly layered surfaces created in this way possess a profound sense of depth, where inside and outside intermingle. They powerfully draw the viewer’s gaze deep into the works.

Marking her first solo show at Kenji Taki Gallery, this exhibition will primarily feature her recent works.

Painting is fascinating. It depicts non-flat things on a flat surface. By folding and crushing things, it squeezes the world into a flat plane. Things far away and things close by are brought together in the same place. Drawing large or small, arranging things radially, cutting open something spherical and laying it flat.

Since ancient times, painting has continually invented ways to squeeze the world into a flat space. In reality, we have two eyes, one on the right and one on the left, so we cannot even see the world the way a single-lens camera does. And yet we look at a photorealistic painting and say, “It looks just like the real thing.” Within a painting, truth and fiction can exist in exactly the same way. So people have painted inside tombs, sending things on to the afterlife.

I draw a line. Like ivy, it crawls around the outside and inside of a house. When the line closes, it becomes a solid form. A fine, hard pen tip cuts through space. Even though the paper appears to remain a single, unchanged flat surface twists and turns inside out, expanding the space, because a line keeps cutting onward infinitely.

Riding on that line, I can take poses I have never taken before. I can stretch my eyes and touch my own back. The severed edges become entrances that open into another space.

I apply paint. As I push the paint forward, digging deeper into the background, the paint piles up and forms mounds,even though I am digging. On a painting surface, a mountain and a hole become the same thing.

I connect things coming from over there with things coming from over here. If they push against each other and reach an equilibrium, they float in mid-air, as if standing back-to-back. Some things emerge from the other side through a mesh, while others slip in from this side. After all, both “over there” and “over here” are simply collections of particles. I sometimes think that if the particles from there interlock with the particles from here, they might just be able to pass through each other.

I create paintings through the very act of using my own body to sense and interact.

Drawing, cutting, and connecting different parts feels a lot like cultivating the land. Both things from reality and subconscious are absorbed into it. There are also times when I simply wait for something to come. I am tossed around by the painting, resist it, and then continue to paint. It may sound as though I am leaving things up to someone else, but there are moments when I begin to understand what kind of painting it wants to become. Those moments are so fascinating that, if I could, I would want to keep touching the painting forever.

This exhibition presents primarily recent works including paintings on canvas, magazines, clay, and fragments that exist before they become paintings.

September 6, 2026　
Fukumi Sukigara