Artists | MAKI Gallery | MAKI

Born in 1987 in Kanagawa, Japan, Anne Kagioka Rigoulet received a BFA in Oil Painting in 2011 followed by an MFA in Mural Painting in 2013 from the Tokyo University of the Arts. Kagioka went on to enroll in Fresco and Mosaic at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et des Métiers d’Art in Paris and continued her studies in Fresco at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. She eventually established her own studio in Kamakura, where she lives and works today.
Kagioka’s distinctly textured paintings utilize a unique method that combines fabric collage with sgraffito (“to scratch” in Italian), a classic technique used in mural decor where multiple layers of paint are applied, then scraped away to reveal the colors underneath. The artist’s interest lies in capturing the ephemeral moment when a familiar landscape transforms into an abstract vision, and in 2014, she began her signature Reflection series—sculptural paintings based on studies of water reflections from around the world. This later led to her Figure series, which depicts human figures as their reflections are fragmented by wavering water surfaces. In 2019, Kagioka’s experience at an artist residency program in Luxembourg birthed the Element series, in which she captures the country’s mammoth rock formations—gradually carved from millennia of water erosion—by thinly layering acrylic paint on bare canvas. The expressive modes explored in these three bodies of work were further developed in the artist’s Portrait series, which harnesses the fluid energy of water to deconstruct and reassemble individual faces. Kagioka’s paintings, composed of striking yet delicate colors, vacillate between abstract and representational, two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms, all the while continuing to fascinate viewers with their keen aesthetic insight and endless evolution.
The artist’s solo exhibitions include Undersurface, MAKI Gallery (Tokyo, 2024); Addition - Subtraction, MAKI Gallery (Tokyo, 2022); Transition, MAKI Gallery (Tokyo, 2021); A Moment of Immersion, MAKI Gallery (Tokyo, 2018); Reflection: 2015-16, MAKI Gallery (Tokyo, 2016); and Anne Kagioka Rigoulet, MAKI Gallery (Paris, 2014). She has also participated in various group shows and mural projects in Japan and Europe, as well as multiple art fairs across the globe. In 2023, Kagioka was included in ABSTRACTION: The Genesis and Evolution of Abstract Painting, a major exhibition at the Artizon Museum in Tokyo, as one of the emerging contemporary artists who pursue new forms of creative expression while carrying on the traditions of abstract painting from the twentieth century. Kagioka's work is also part of the Artizon Museum’s permanent collection.