AYAKO ROKKAKU | IMAGINATION FOR FLYING ADVENTURE
13 MAY – 11 JUNE 2022
KÖNIG LONDON presents IMAGINATION FOR FLYING ADVENTURE, an exhibition of paintings by Ayako Rokkaku.
Rokkaku’s supple images transend the conventional categories of figuration and abstraction. IMAGINATION FOR FLYING ADVENTURE is Rokkaku’s first solo show in the U.K. Its title refers to an energetic entrenchment and the physical and emotional flights her paintings make possible.
Throughout the exhibition, the body becomes a vehicle for inspiration through an attention to its nuanced sensations. Recurring motifs crop up across Rokkaku’s paintings but they are defined by the liminal space between them and the physical movements which contextualize this space, giving rise to manga-styled creatures: cartoon-like girls whose eyes brim with an individuated sentience.
IMAGINATION FOR FLYING ADVENTURE posits an imbricated narrative between the embodied presence of the artist and the imaginarium she depicts. Painting directly onto canvas and other surfaces (such as cardboard) with her hands, Rokkaku depicts a fantastical landscape in which small creatures fall in and out of sight, suggesting a narrative within each painting and throughout her larger practice.
The figures draw from the aesthetics of manag, an animated, creature-like quality. Each charachter has their unique facial expression; and their large eyes mirror of the viewer’s gaze. By inserting unique visual trajectories into each figures eyes, Rokkaku both anticipates and directs her audience’s line of vision. Her paintings are at once a record of momentary inspirations, minute observations of the body, and documentation of the kinesthetic tension a specific surface yields in relation to the artist’s hand.
Situating her figures within the immersive constraints of an open-ended pictorial setting, Rokkaku allows them to emerge from sweltering abstraction; they occupy a perpetually in-between state which is as much interior as exterior, a garden as much as a forested utopia. In this manner, Rokkaku posits an implicit commentary on the tradition of canonical painting, which has always preferred entrap figures within the confines of static, mathematical dimensions. Transforming painting into active engagement with an ongoing process of discovery, Rokkaku demonstrates what might happen if the figures in a painting suddenly came alive, exploding the space they occupied with a sudden, disquieting life.
© Text Jeffrey Grunthaner
KÖNIG LONDON presents IMAGINATION FOR FLYING ADVENTURE, an exhibition of paintings by Ayako Rokkaku.
Rokkaku’s supple images transend the conventional categories of figuration and abstraction. IMAGINATION FOR FLYING ADVENTURE is Rokkaku’s first solo show in the U.K. Its title refers to an energetic entrenchment and the physical and emotional flights her paintings make possible.
Throughout the exhibition, the body becomes a vehicle for inspiration through an attention to its nuanced sensations. Recurring motifs crop up across Rokkaku’s paintings but they are defined by the liminal space between them and the physical movements which contextualize this space, giving rise to manga-styled creatures: cartoon-like girls whose eyes brim with an individuated sentience.
IMAGINATION FOR FLYING ADVENTURE posits an imbricated narrative between the embodied presence of the artist and the imaginarium she depicts. Painting directly onto canvas and other surfaces (such as cardboard) with her hands, Rokkaku depicts a fantastical landscape in which small creatures fall in and out of sight, suggesting a narrative within each painting and throughout her larger practice.
The figures draw from the aesthetics of manag, an animated, creature-like quality. Each charachter has their unique facial expression; and their large eyes mirror of the viewer’s gaze. By inserting unique visual trajectories into each figures eyes, Rokkaku both anticipates and directs her audience’s line of vision. Her paintings are at once a record of momentary inspirations, minute observations of the body, and documentation of the kinesthetic tension a specific surface yields in relation to the artist’s hand.
Situating her figures within the immersive constraints of an open-ended pictorial setting, Rokkaku allows them to emerge from sweltering abstraction; they occupy a perpetually in-between state which is as much interior as exterior, a garden as much as a forested utopia. In this manner, Rokkaku posits an implicit commentary on the tradition of canonical painting, which has always preferred entrap figures within the confines of static, mathematical dimensions. Transforming painting into active engagement with an ongoing process of discovery, Rokkaku demonstrates what might happen if the figures in a painting suddenly came alive, exploding the space they occupied with a sudden, disquieting life.
© Text Jeffrey Grunthaner
