Masanori Handa

Masanori Handa is an artist who begins his creative process by engaging deeply with the landscapes and events he encounters. With a keen sensitivity to accidental discoveries and subtle fluctuations in perception, he assembles these elements into poetic, immersive spatial experiences. While his works may appear fragmented, they contain sharp insight and construct a distinct visual language.

Handa's practice focuses on invisible yet undeniable aspects of reality—urban landscapes, religious rituals, and unconscious memories—translated through a wide range of media including installation, sculpture, and painting. Using a diverse array of materials such as plants, fabric, wood, and metal, his works envelop the space and evoke a visceral, bodily experience for the viewer.

In his signature work, nakakiyo no entakukei, he combined tropical plant forms, the sensibility of classical Japanese poetry, and a spiritual sense of place to create an architectural yet organic installation. By incorporating the natural aging of materials and the passage of time, Handa seeks to express fleeting poetic realities suspended between past and future. Works such as 150 hedron and Golden Cloud explore the solemn yet invisible daily rituals of Islamic urban life, bringing together multiple cultural and religious codes into tangible form.

In 2008, Handa was selected as the protégé of Rebecca Horn under the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, working and exchanging ideas across Europe. This experience profoundly influenced his approach to space as a poetic structure and continues to inform his exploration of perception, memory, and spirituality.

In 2022, he participated in the Hawai‘i Triennale with his installation 127 Scenes, responding to the Pacific’s natural environment and cultural memory. By fusing site-specific spirituality and process-based making, the work revealed the geopolitical dimensions of his practice.

In 2019, he was invited to join the Inujima Art Project by Benesse Art Site Naoshima, engaging in a long-term dialogue with the island's landscape and history. Through these experiences, Handa continues to shape his unique visual language rooted in co-presence, invisible perception, and the imagination of new “places.”

His work, grounded in poetic sensitivity and acute perception, reinterprets themes of Asian spirituality and local memory through a contemporary lens and has garnered international attention.

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