Ayako Rokkaku

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 where paradise is not a destination, but a fleeting sensation, just beyond reach yet always within feeling. 

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.