AYAKO ROKKAKU
FOR THE MOMENTS YOU FELL PARADISE

MUSEO NACIONAL THYSSEN-BORNEMISZA, MADRID, SPAIN
23 MAY – 7 SEPTEMBER 2025

The museum presents a solo exhibition by Japanese artist Ayako Rokkaku (Tokyo, 1982) that traces her artistic evolution through thirty early and recent works, including paintings, sculptures, and installations. The exhibition, part of the programme of shows devoted to the Blanca and Borja Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, reveals a universe in constant transformation, where past and present intermingle and paradise is not a destination but a fleeting sensation, just beyond reach yet always within feeling.

Ayako Rokkaku, PARADISE, 2025

Known for her intuitive, hand-painted canvases, Rokkaku creates immersive worlds where figures drift between the tangible and the imagined. Her dreamlike figures—floating between innocence and metamorphosis—find their origins in her earliest paintings, where recurring motifs, such as fish, first appeared. Decades later, these elements resurface, seamlessly woven into new compositions that reflect her ongoing fascination with impermanence. This sense of fleeting beauty resonates with mono no aware, the Japanese aesthetic philosophy that embraces the transience of all things. In her work, nothing is fixed—figures emerge and dissolve, echoing the way clouds shift and reform in the sky. 

The exhibition includes a live painting.

FEATURED ARTIST

AYAKO ROKKAKU
Ayako Rokkaku (b. 1982 in Chiba, Japan) lives and works between Berlin, Porto, and Tokyo. Her artistic process involves an instinctive and performative approach, as she uses her bare hands to apply acrylic paint, translating the motion of her body onto the canvas. True to her distinctive technique, she moulds figures with the tips of her fingers, whether on canvas, through glass, or in bronze.

Rokkaku’s visual language seamlessly shifts between elusive abstract formations and figurative elements, drawing inspiration from the kawaii culture (Japanese for cute) and capturing the boundless imagination of a child. Rokkaku is known for he...
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