Ayako Rokkaku (b. Tokyo, 1982) is the subject of a major solo exhibition at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, offering a profound journey through her vibrant artistic universe.
The exhibition, part of the programme dedicated to the Blanca and Borja Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, features thirty works spanning Rokkaku’s career—from her earliest pieces to her most recent creations. Visitors are invited to explore an evolving landscape of paintings, sculptures, and installations that showcase her unique visual language and deeply intuitive process.
Rokkaku, renowned for her hand-painted canvases created using only her fingers, crafts immersive, dreamlike realms where figures drift between reality and imagination. Her characters—delicate yet powerful—embody a sense of innocence tinged with transformation. Many of her early motifs, such as fish, reappear in her current work, revealing a continuous, almost cyclical, artistic narrative.
A central theme of the show is impermanence, a concept that Rokkaku embraces through the Japanese aesthetic philosophy of mono no aware—the gentle, melancholic awareness of the transience of all things. In her world, nothing remains static; figures emerge and dissolve, like clouds reshaping across a vast sky, conveying an emotional landscape that is ever-shifting and deeply human.
One of the highlights of the exhibition is a live painting session, offering the audience a rare chance to witness Rokkaku’s spontaneous, tactile method in real time—a performance that blurs the boundary between creation and contemplation.
