Ayako Rokkaku’s exuberant paintings, which feature cartoonish characters adrift in rainbow-tinged fields, have won her fans across the globe. The self-taught Japanese artist usually paints with her bare hands, giving her Superflat-esque figures and color schemes a rougher edge. Her chosen surfaces range from canvases to pieces of cardboard and vintage Louis Vuitton suitcases. Rokkaku began painting in 2002 and her big break arrived in 2006, when she was awarded the prestigious Akio Goto Prize at Kaikai Kiki’s Geisai art fair. Since then, she has exhibited at galleries in Paris, Tokyo, and Amsterdam, and in 2015, she participated in the Swatch Art Pavilion’s Open Studio at the Venice Biennale. Her work regularly fetches six-figure prices on the secondary market. Rokkaku’s raucous compositions reflect her love for the unbounded freedom and energy of childhood.
