“刘曼文：那地方恍若梦境——三幕情景剧”将于10月13日在上海开幕

“我悄悄用心去触摸这历史的痕迹，画笔承载着我的视觉和内心的责任。景物在光的作用下游离，天蓝的极端纯粹又富有质感。”

2023年底，刘曼文再次踏上意大利的土地，再次用身体去感受托斯卡纳冬日的阳光，用心灵去接近萦绕在这片人类文明的乡境上空不朽的灵魂。在拉斐尔的出生地，与透过古堡窗扇的金色晨光一同迎接黎明；在米开朗基罗的出生地，走近被绿箩缠裹在阴影中的石雕，去触摸生命的重量；在达芬奇的出生地，会心地发现就连树木的姿态和布局都透露着妙不可言的心机。约翰·伯格评论过文艺复兴的天才艺术家们有着魔术师的本领，他们熟知人类精神的居所，并且精准地定位它，悉心地描绘它。在这一点上，艺术家就如神，或者，比神更伟大。对于刘曼文，每一次走进文艺复兴发源地，以朝圣的心态接近这些在她近半个世纪的艺术求索中一直敬仰膜拜的神，都是一段在追忆与憧憬之间捕获灵性的经历，让艺术与内心的真实表达更接近一步。

At the end of 2023, Liu Manwen once again set foot on Italian soil, experiencing the Tuscan winter sunlight with her body and connecting with the immortal souls that hover over this landscape of human civilization with her spirit. In Raphael’s birthplace, she greeted the dawn alongside the golden morning light filtering through the windows of an ancient castle; in Michelangelo’s birthplace, she approached stone sculptures wrapped in the shadows of climbing vines, touching the weight of life; in Da Vinci’s birthplace, she noticed, with a knowing eye, how even the posture and arrangement of the trees conveyed an ineffable design. John Berger once remarked that the Renaissance’s genius artists possessed the power of magicians—they understood the dwelling place of the human spirit, pinpointing it with precision, and depicted it with care. In this sense, the artist is like a god—or perhaps even greater than a god. For Liu Manwen, every pilgrimage to the cradle of the Renaissance, approaching those figures she has revered and worshipped in her nearly five-decade artistic journey, becomes an experience of capturing a sense of spirituality between memory and anticipation, bringing her closer to an authentic expression of art and the inner self.

本次展览，就是以刘曼文最近一次造访文艺复兴三杰出生地的所见所感，作为这部三幕情景剧的视觉索引，带领观众进入由艺术家全新创作的园林主题的作品建构的舞台。这些包含着反复的笔触、线条和色域纠缠的画面，却又色彩飘逸，显露着轻盈动感的韵律，调动观众们围绕每一幕舞台当中艺术家对历史遗痕的视觉转换，走近或拉远，以直觉为驱力，唤醒自我身体对自然和艺术的感官反应。

This exhibition draws directly from Liu’s most recent visit to the birthplaces of the three great masters of the Renaissance, serving as a visual index for this three-act scenography, guiding the audience into the stage constructed by the artist's newly created garden-themed works. These canvases, entangled with repeated strokes, lines, and tonal variations, exude a sense of ethereal movement and rhythm. The colors are fluid, airy, and dynamic, encouraging viewers to engage intuitively with the artist’s visual reinterpretations of historical traces, drawing near or stepping back, awakening a sensory response to both nature and art through their own physical presence.

托斯卡纳的丘陵曲折蜿蜒，劳累了一年的土地此刻进入休养生息。葡萄园要剪枝、翻土，枯枝败叶散落在园中，是生命轮回的另一种密码。当神造物时，他只想完成一件与他相同的作品，无需费力推陈出新，因为他拥有无限的时间；天才造物不知疲倦，他要为万物赋予灵魂，因为他感受着生命的瞬间和有限，听从着在艺术中得以永恒的召唤。

The Tuscan hills twist and turn, and the land, weary from a year of toil, now enters a period of rest and renewal. The vineyards must be pruned, the soil tilled, and the withered branches and fallen leaves scattered throughout the gardens, revealing another cipher of life's cyclical nature. When God created, He sought only to make something in His own likeness, needing no effort to innovate, for He possessed infinite time. A genius, however, creates tirelessly, infusing everything with soul, for he feels the fleeting nature of life, responding to the call of eternity found in art. 

托斯卡纳的葡萄经历冬日的休眠，在刘曼文的春天的园林中复苏，枝叶舒展开来，虬枝盘曲，一片对绿色的记忆，新鲜又陌生。根茎一直蔓延，触到艺术家出生长大的中国北方冻土。

Tuscany's vines, dormant through the winter, awaken in Liu Manwen’s springtime garden, their branches unfurling and twisting—a vivid memory of green, fresh yet unfamiliar. The roots stretch far, reaching toward the frozen earth of northern China, where the artist was born and raised.

刘曼文说，那晚在乌尔比诺下榻的酒店，就是五百年前拉斐尔出生的古堡，推开厚重的雕窗看到沐浴在金色阳光下的古城，那一刻她知道，拉斐尔非乌尔比诺莫属。和这个早上一样的金色阳光穿透雾霭不带滤镜，照着拉斐尔的《花园中的圣母》，秀美、典雅、明朗，他是怎么做到的？心无杂念的诚意，有灵魂的颜色。

Liu Manwen recalls that the hotel where she stayed in Urbino was the very castle where Raphael was born five centuries ago. As she opened the heavy, carved windows and gazed upon the ancient city bathed in golden sunlight, she knew in that moment—Raphael belonged to Urbino. The same golden light that pierced through the morning mist, untouched by filters, illuminated Raphael's “Madonna in the Garden”—graceful, elegant, serene. How did he achieve this? It was his pure sincerity, free from distraction, and the soulful quality of his colors. 

刘曼文在大自然的点线面中建构这种单纯的关系，色彩激活某些瞬间往事，在文艺复兴与俄罗斯写实主义之间，途径印象派的色彩，在成为艺术家的路途上，留下清晰的、朦胧的印痕，缥缈斑斓，恍如梦境。

In her own work, Liu constructs these simple, pure relationships from nature’s lines, shapes, and surfaces. Her use of color reactivates memories, threading through Renaissance ideals, Russian Realism, and Impressionism’s chromatic explorations. Along her path to becoming an artist, Liu has left behind both sharp and blurred traces—ethereal, vivid, like a dream suspended between clarity and reverie.

40 X 30 cm

坐落在Caprese 小镇山坡上的米开朗基罗出生地，是一幢石头和砖块建构的文艺复兴古宅，墙面布满青苔和绿萝，厚重的山墙不给阳光留一点缝隙，园子里一座现代主义雕塑立在阴影中，等待被阳光再次创造。

Perched on the hillside of Caprese, the birthplace of Michelangelo is a Renaissance-era house built of stone and brick, its walls covered in moss and creeping vines. The thick stone walls allow no sunlight to penetrate, while a modernist sculpture in the garden stands in shadow, awaiting sunlight’s creative touch once more. 

在所有文艺复兴大师中，米开朗基罗是描绘创世纪最多的一位：亚当夏娃的人类起源神话，昼夜晨昏记录时间的秩序和归宿，在米开朗基罗身上背负了最多的人类的梦想、欲望、悲怆和幻象，生命的重量。

Among all the Renaissance masters, Michelangelo is the one who depicted the Genesis story most extensively—the myth of Adam and Eve, the cosmic order of day and night, morning and dusk, all carrying the weight of time’s passage. In Michelangelo, the greatest weight was that of human dreams, desires, sorrows, and illusions—the profound weight of life.

（文/王凯梅）

（Text by Wang Kaimei）