#MINIMALISMUS: BETWEEN EXPRESSIONISM AND ANIME: AYAKO ROKKAKU

#MINIMALISMUS: BETWEEN EXPRESSIONISM AND ANIME: AYAKO ROKKAKU

Interview by Nora Hagdahl
Artwork by Ayako Rokkaku

Ayako Rokkaku’s expressive paintings – abstract expressionism embedding motifs of cartoonish characters, flower fields and rainbows – is a mix of cute amine and wild color arrangements, reminiscent of the 40s and 50s paintings of Europe. The self-taught Japanese artist paints with her bare hands, thus approaching Jackson Pollock’s ideas of action painting by inserting the body and its movement into the work. Born in 1982 in Chiba, outside of Tokyo, she started off her career as a painter at the age of 20. In 2006, 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. Rokkaku’s loud compositions reflect her love for the unbounded freedom and energy of childhood.

Nora Hagdahl: Since childhood is at the core of your practice as an artist – your motifs and style are often connected to the innocence and playfulness of a child’s painting – do you want to start by telling me a bit about where you grew up and how your life looked like in Chiba?

Ayako Rokkaku: Chiba, where I grew up, is neither an especially cultural city, nor proper countryside, rich in nature. It’s a very ordinary city that is easy to live and work in. There is really nothing to complain about, but in the end, it made me feel quite cramped. It was a bit small, after all.

Can you elaborate a bit more? Do you have siblings? What did your parents do? What did your childhood home look like? What’s the city like? How was your school? Maybe you can share a childhood memory that’s dear to you?

My father was an engineer and often traveled abroad. Chiba is not an international city, but my father’s souvenirs and stories from various countries made my views more wide and made me interested in foreign countries. My mother raised four children while working part-time. I am the eldest daughter, and I have a sister who is 3 years younger, a brother who is 6 years younger, and a sister who is 12 years younger. I think we all liked drawing when we were young, but I’m the only one who has become an artist.

I grew up in a place with a lot of young family homes in the suburbs. I was very shy, especially in places like school where there were a lot of people get together, so I didn’t like school so much, but I enjoyed playing with my siblings and our friends in the neighborhood. We used to have house parties by ourselves several times a year, inviting our parents and cooking, playing original games, doing theater. Those were good memories for me and maybe the start of knowing the joy of creating something.

Do you remember when you first started to get into art and painting? Is it something you have had with you since you were a child? When did you decide to get into art as a profession and what had you been doing prior to that?

When I was really young, I loved drawing, especially the coloring part made me feel very alive and happy. When I enrolled in school, I didn’t have much interest in drawing any more. Around the age of 20, I began to feel strongly that I needed a tool for expressing myself. Then and there, I decided to become a painter.

What did you use to paint as a toddler? Do you have any paintings saved from then? When you say you wanted to express yourself – what was it that you wanted to express, what kind of feeling was that? What had you done up until then? What did you want to do before you decided to be a painter? Was it a hard decision to make, as an artist career is very unstable and few make it? Can you share a bit your thoughts when deciding to go into the arts?

I don’t think there are any left now, but I think I liked using colored pencils and crayons to color. I used to draw people, flowers, animals – things that are very common for kids’ drawings – and I also liked coloring books and adding colors to black and white illustrations in any book, flyer, postcard, etc.

Before deciding to be a painter, there wasn’t any specific job I wanted to do. I didn’t feel so comfortable being in a group or community, and I thought I wouldn’t be able to do well in a job like working for a company full time. When I thought about what I could do with more freedom, and how I could express my inner self more, somehow I had the intuition that I wanted to become a painter. At first, my family was against my decision to become an artist, but I wasn’t so scared, I had a strong determination and optimism to try until I was satisfied.

I know you are self-taught; have you ever regretted not getting a formal art education? How do you believe your career and art might have looked different if you did?

It is important to keep on learning, but I think I’ve benefited from having being forced to develop my own style – so I have no regrets. To be honest, if I had gone to art school, I might have gotten sick of it and stopped drawing.

People most often compare your work with children’s paintings or make parallels with your work and the imagination of a child. What do you think about that? In what ways are you interested in the world of children and how is that expressed in your art? How would you yourself describe your art?

I want to make paintings that contain the fresh excitement, anxiety and joy I felt when I was a child – so, it makes me happy when people see my paintings and say that they remind them of what they felt when they were children.

How would you yourself describe your art? Can you elaborate a bit more on how you would describe your own work? Why do you think you come back again and again to wanting to describe the inner world of children in your work? Is there more to it?

It’s always difficult to explain because I just let things come out naturally… I always want to create paintings that have a childlike touch and are introspective, but with positive energy to step forward to the outside. The style may change in the future, but I don’t do it too consciously in my head, rather just use my bare hands and try to look at the colors and shapes gradually change or expand.

You draw with your own hands and don’t use a pencil, which is quite unusual. Why did you start working like that and what’s the appeal for you with the technique?

When I started drawing seriously, I was 20 years old. I experimented with various styles, and when I drew with my fingers, I felt it resonated the best with me. I feel I can express more directly what I want painting with my fingers than with a brush, and that it improves my ability to improvise. I think it’s good to touch the paint directly; it’s stimulating.

When reading old interviews with you, I’ve learned that abstract expressionism was a big inspiration for you, as well as kawaii culture. Can you tell me about how Western painting tradition and Japanese culture merge in your art?

Whether I live in Japan or abroad, my life is a mixture of both Japanese and Western cultures naturally, so I think it’s been very natural for me to be influenced by both. I like abstract expressionist paintings as I believe they have good energy. When I paint on canvas, I usually start with putting colors on without any plan and keep adding color for an abstract composition. However, I feel that that alone isn’t enough and want to add shapes and figures that are “kawaii” – fun and energetic. As I paint, I transform the abstract cloud-like shapes into dresses, flowers, or small creatures until the painting has a good mix of concrete and abstract.

Kawaii, for me, is often connected to something feminine and cute, while abstract expressionism, for me, is very masculine. Can you tell me more about your interest in the both of them? What other art inspires you in your work?

I like the mixture of various elements, not just kawaii. I think what people see in my paintings depend on the person who sees it and when they see it, because it is both cute, delicate, strong, energetic, angry and joyful – or anxious and positive. I like there to be a conflict of feelings embedded in the images I make.

What other art inspires you in your work? Any contemporary artists that you admire?

Expressionist artists, whose works can touch someone’s whole body with good energy, inspire me a lot, like Cy Twombly, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, etc.

It’s not a direct influence for my painting, but when I was in my twenties, I participated in an event called GEISAI hosted by Takashi Murakami in Tokyo, and he taught me about the importance of history and context, about the market, how to sublimate myself into a work of art, etc. I, as an autodidact, learned a lot from his vivid words as a contemporary Japanese artist.

In what way does your practice relate to the Japanese tradition of manga and anime?

Living in Japan, I think I have more opportunities to naturally come into contact with manga and anime than I would have had if I grew up overseas, but I didn’t think I was particularly influenced by them. In Japan, we see many kawaii characters not only in manga and anime, but everywhere in our daily lives. I believe people have the ability to really relate to imaginary characters, and that they can give support and courage to step into a new world. I want to have such symbols in my paintings, which is one reason I put the figure of a girl in my paintings.

Who are the small figures in your paintings, according to you?

I don’t have a model in particular; it just comes to me naturally as I paint. It is not my portrait, but it’s like as if a seed comes out from me and grows on its own outside of me.

You often paint in a large-scale format. What’s the appeal with a big canvas for you?

Simply physical reasons – I paint by my hand, so I like a size that is comfortable to paint with by hand. I like being able to feel the painting with my whole body when I stand in front the work.

Before Christmas, you did a 24-hour, live painting performance at London’s Old Session House. Can you tell me a bit about that and what it means for you to invite your audience to your process of working?

This was an event in which I broadcasted me painting live on the internet for anyone in the world to see, and anyone could buy a print of the painting for 24 hours. When I started painting, I used to do live painting on cardboard and sold them on the spot. This was like a worldwide version of that. I hope that by sharing my process, the people who own the print will also have their own memories of that day with them when looking back at the print.