Playful, Stormy, Continuing Ayako Rokkaku

JAPANESE ARTIST AYAKO ROKKAKU PRESENTS HER FIRST SOLO EXHIBITION IN LATIN AMERICA, IN SÃO PAULO
 

Playful, Stormy, Continuing brings together previously unseen works produced during a residency in Brazil and includes a live performance by the artist — sixth in Japan’s overall auction sales ranking and the youngest among the 50 highest-ranked artists on the Artnet list
 

São Paulo, August 2026 – Baró presents Playful, Stormy, Continuing, from August 19 to September 3, 2026, the first solo exhibition in Latin America by Japanese artist Ayako Rokkaku, curated by Ana Carolina Ralston. Held at Taller Zaragoza in a pop-up format, the exhibition brings together around fifteen paintings, including works produced during the artist’s recent residency in Brazil. The project marks Baró’s return to São Paulo, the city where it was founded in 1999 by Maria Baró. Today led by Stephan Baró alongside its founder — with additional spaces in Palma de Mallorca, Paris and Abu Dhabi — the gallery begins a new phase in the city of São Paulo.
 

Known for developing a deeply intuitive and singular visual language, Ayako Rokkaku creates her paintings directly with her hands, without using brushes or preparatory drawings. The physical gesture becomes an essential part of the work, allowing each composition to emerge from a spontaneous dialogue between body, color and surface. Each painting records an unrepeatable moment in which improvisation, sensitivity and creative freedom merge into a single process.
 

Her visual universe is inhabited by female figures, hybrid creatures and constantly transforming landscapes. Rather than illustrating narratives, her works construct poetic atmospheres in which delicacy and intensity, memory and imagination coexist.
 

“Her painting engages with the traditions of Expressionism, gestural abstraction and Japanese kawaii culture, without being limited by any of them — remaining, above all, absolutely contemporary,” says Maria Baró.
 

An equally important dimension of her artistic practice is painting as a shared experience. Since the beginning of her career, Ayako has performed live, creating her works in front of an audience and revealing the living, process-based nature of painting. At the exhibition opening on August 19, the artist will stage an unprecedented performance at Taller Zaragoza, offering the Brazilian public th opportunity to closely observe her creative process.
 

“Sometimes people say that watching me paint live is like meditation. Perhaps because there are no spectacular gestures, only concentration and presence. For me, painting is a meditative state, and I am happy when those who watch can feel that too,” Rokkaku said in an interview published in the catalogue of her exhibition at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.
 

According to Artnet data, Rokkaku is currently the Japanese female painter of her generation with the highest cumulative volume of public auction sales. Her individual record for a single work at auction reached 184 million yen (approximately R$9 million) — one of the highest prices among Japanese artists born in the 1980s — placing her sixth in Japan’s overall cumulative sales ranking for visual artists and making her the youngest artist among the platform’s 50 highest-ranked names.
 

ABOUT THE ARTIST
 

Ayako Rokkaku lives between Berlin, Porto and Tokyo. She has been the subject of major solo exhibitions at the Long Museum in Shanghai, China (2023); her work was exhibited at the Chiba Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan (2020); the Jan van der Togt Museum, Amstelveen, Netherlands (2019); the Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum, Bratislava, Slovakia (2012); and Kunsthal Rotterdam, Netherlands (2011). In 2015, she exhibited at the Swatch Art Pavilion during the 56th Venice Biennale.
 

Her works are held in the collections of the Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum, Slovakia; Museum Voorlinden, Netherlands; Gunma Museum of Art, Japan; Sehwa Museum of Art / Sehwa Art and Culture Foundation, South Korea; and the Karuizawa Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan, among others.
 

ABOUT BARÓ
 

Baró is an international contemporary art gallery founded by Maria Baró in São Paulo in 1999. With spaces in Palma de Mallorca, Paris and Abu Dhabi, the gallery represents artists from multiple generations and geographies, brought together not by a single ideology but by a shared conviction in the seriousness of their work. Expansive by nature and rigorous by conviction, Baró participates in leading international art fairs, including Art Basel Miami Beach, Frieze Abu Dhabi, The Armory Show, ARCOmadrid, SP-Arte and Abu Dhabi Art.
 

INFORMATION
 

Exhibition: Playful, Stormy, Continuing, by Ayako Rokkaku 

Curated by Ana Carolina 

Ralston Opening:

August 19, 2026, 6–9 pm 

On view: August 19 to September 3, 2026 

Visiting days: Tuesday to Saturday, 11 am–7 pm 

Baró pop-up at Taller Zaragoza 

Rua Amauri, 62 – Jardim Europa, São Paulo

barogaleria.com

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contato@tabulacom.art