Masanori Handa

Masanori Handa is an artist who transforms everyday encounters with landscapes and events into works that open up his senses to the fluid and complex nature of reality. Attuned to chance discoveries and subtle shifts in perception, he carefully weaves together fragmentary elements to create works that, while seemingly disjointed, contain sharp insights and form a distinctive visual language.

His practice often draws on urban landscapes, rituals, and memories inscribed in the unconscious. Working across installation, sculpture, and painting, and using diverse materials such as plants, textiles, wood, and metal, Handa creates works that speak directly to the viewer’s bodily awareness.

A notable example, nakakiyo no entakukei, combines the forms of tropical plants with the sensibility of classical waka poetry and the spiritual presence of place, resulting in a space that is both organic and architectural. By embracing the passage of time and the transformation of materials, he seeks to reveal a poetic reality that flickers within transient moments. In works such as 150 hedron and Golden Cloud, Handa turned to everyday imagery and symbols from Islamic cultural contexts, giving sculptural form to the intersections of multiple cultures and faiths within the urban environment.

In 2008, he was selected as the protégé of Rebecca Horn in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, engaging in production and dialogue across Europe. This invaluable experience deepened his approach to constructing space as a poetic structure, a perspective that continues to resonate in his practice today.

In 2019, Handa joined the Inujima Project organized by Benesse Art Site Naoshima, where he has been engaging with the island’s environment and history over the long term, imagining new possibilities for “place.” These experiences have instilled in his work a strong sense of coexistence with others and an attentiveness to unseen realms of perception.

At the Hawai‘i Triennial 2022, he presented the video installation 127 Scenes, responding to the natural environment and cultural memory of the Pacific. By juxtaposing the seas of Hawai‘i and his native Kanagawa, Handa approached the Pacific Ocean as an embodiment of “spatiotemporal continuity.” The fragmented, road-trip-like footage may be seen as vivid, color-charged drawings of the sea.

Rooted in poetic sensibility and acute perception, Handa’s work invites us to consider fundamental questions about how we know, feel, and imagine the world.

Biography
1979　Born in Kanagawa, Japan
2003　BFA, Tokyo University of the Arts
2008　Selected Protégé of Rebecca Horn, Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative
Currently based in Kanagawa, Japan

Selected Solo Exhibitions
2017 　A Palace, Ota Fine Arts, Singapore
2015 　Nakakiyo no Entakukei, Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo
2013 　nakakiyo no entakukei, Ota Fine Arts, Singapore
2010 　Transforming Modes – The Materiality of Reality in Contemporary Art, αM Project 2009, Tokyo

Selected Group Exhibitions
2023 　The Rolex Arts Festival, National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens (EMST), Athens, Greece
2022 　Hawai‘i Triennale 2022: Pacific Century – E Ho‘omau no Moananuiākea, Honolulu, USA
2019 　Setouchi Triennale 2019, Inujima, Okayama, Japan
2015 　TWO STICKS, Museum of Architecture, Wrocław, Poland
2015 　ERASURE: FROM CONCEPTUALISM TO ABSTRACTION, Osage Hong Kong & City University of Hong Kong
2011 　Ways of Worldmaking, The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan
2007 　The Door into Summer: The Age of Micropop, Art Tower Mito, Ibaraki, Japan
2006 　Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, Niigata, Japan

Selected Collections
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Takahashi Collection, Tokyo
Daiwa Radiator Factory, Hiroshima
The Japan Foundation