Ayako ROKKAKU
Untitled (ARP08-034)
Acrylic on Canvas
130 x 190 cm
2008
Ayako Rokkaku was born in Chiba-shi, a town situated in the ‘greater Tokyo’ area. She started to paint in 2002 and mastered her own painting technique. She never attended art school but arrived at her distinct painting style completely auto-didactically. Rokkaku’s iconic style features large, mostly female figures with ambiguous facial expressions full of character. Vividly colored backgrounds, littered with flowers, tiny figures and rainbow-like smears compose a colorful dream world. The large eyes and long arms of her characters fit within the Japanese manga style, while the bright colors and compositions are reminiscent of drawings made by children. Not coincidentally, as Rokkaku always felt a greet affinity for the imagination and lack of rules they display.
Rokkaku has been the subject of major solo exhibitions at The Hangaram Museum of Art in Seoul (2024), The Long Museum, Shanghai, China (2023); the Chiba Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan (2020); Museum Jan van der Togt, Amstelveen, Netherlands (2019); Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum, Bratislava, Slovakia (2012); and Kunsthal, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2011). In 2015, she exhibited at the Swatch Art Pavilion during the 56th Venice Biennale. In 2022 her art sold on auction worldwide for more than 26 million USD with a record for an individual work selling for 1.2 million USD.
Rokkaku’s unique technique, in which she directly applies the acrylic paint to the canvas using her bare fingers and hands, is easily recognizable in the dynamic and lively compositions. This is a very rare piece from 2008 when she had just started to collaborate with Nico Delaive in 2006. It has a large signature girl-figure with an ambiguous and hard-to-read expression. In her early works Rokkaku displayed more open space in her canvasses, giving the work a heightened sense of lightness and frivolity. She often utilizes child-like doodle elements in her early pieces to emphasize the intuitive nature of her painting style.