AYAKO
ROKKAKU
What
Glass
Withholds
Berlin, 2026 by Danaï Loukas
“Glass is a substance defined by transformation, temperature, and delayed collapse.”
“Glass is a substance defined by
transformation, temperature,
and delayed collapse.”
Ayako Rokkaku’s glass sculptures reappear as part of an ongoing exploration within her practice. Their inclusion in SCENERY IN THE PROCESS OF BEING FORMED marks the second time the artist has undertaken an extended period of work on the island of Murano, producing a new group of glass sculptures in close collaboration with master glass blowers at Berengo Studio.
Rokkaku’s first encounter with Murano glass took place in 2023 when she produced her first series of glass sculptures which were shown a year later, in parallel to the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale. During that period, she produced a group of glass works presented in the exhibition DETOUR FOR AN ICE CREAM FAIRY, shown at Palazzo Corner Moncenigo, in 2024. That presentation brought together eight glass sculptures alongside six paintings, including two triptychs, conceived in response to her experience of working with Murano glass. Together, these works functioned as an homage to Venice—its material traditions, its chromatic history, and its capacity to simultaneously inspire and resist contemporary artistic practice.
© Video by Savino Cancellara, courtesy of Berengo Studio
For an artist whose work is fundamentally grounded in immediacy, touch, and direct physical engagement, glass presented a conceptual and material challenge. Rokkaku’s painting practice is famously unmediated by preparatory drawings; works emerge through live, performative gestures in which touch is both method and meaning. Glass, by contrast, introduces distance. It demands collaboration, technical mediation, and an acceptance of processes that cannot be fully controlled by the artist’s hand alone.
Ayako Rokkaku, SCENERY IN THE PROCESS OF BEING FORMED, 2026 at KÖNIG GALERIE © Photo Roman März
This tension became a generative force. The invitation to work in Venice prompted Rokkaku to reconsider her relationship to material and process. Drawing from the deep history of Venetian glassmaking and the city’s Renaissance legacy of colorito (coloring, often opposed to drawing), she approached glass not as a surface to be mastered, but as a volatile, time-based medium shaped through dialogue. Initial drawings served as points of departure, but the final forms emerged through sustained exchange with master glass blowers, making each sculpture the result of collaboration, timing, and material intuition.
The resulting glass works retain the imaginative vocabulary that characterizes Rokkaku’s practice, yet they register a heightened awareness of gravity, liquidity, and suspension. Eyes—an enduring motif in her work—appear embedded within the glass, recalling the figures that surface in her paintings. In some sculptures, small creatures cluster at the base; in others, layered forms evoke melting, folding, or slow descent. References to ice cream recur, not as whimsy alone, but as a metaphor for glass itself: a substance defined by transformation, temperature, and delayed collapse.
What glass ultimately withholds—touch—Rokkaku activates conceptually. The sculptures invite tactile desire while remaining untouchable, their smooth surfaces and softened contours heightening a sense of sensory deferral. In this way, the works extend her ongoing investigation into how material form can carry emotional and bodily.
Ayako Rokkaku, SCENERY IN THE PROCESS OF BEING FORMED, 2026 at KÖNIG GALERIE © Photo Roman März
At the beginning of 2025, Rokkaku returned to Murano to produce a new group of seven glass sculptures at Berengo Studio. These works, now presented as part of SCENERY IN THE PROCESS OF BEING FORMED, reflect a deepened engagement with glass as both collaborator and constraint. Shown alongside works developed in Korea, Germany, Portugal and Spain, the Murano sculptures articulate a practice that evolves through repetition, return, and material negotiation—where each location contributes not an image, but a set of conditions through which form is allowed to emerge.
