"The Luminous Installations of Artist Mark Handforth" by Marco Belloni

A journey into Mark Handforth’s luminous poetics, where neon, streetlights, and minimal forms become tools to reveal the ordinary.

Mark Handforth’s practice is grounded in a constant reflection on light as both material and phenomenon, capable of redefining how space is perceived. Through sculptures built from elements of the urban landscape — industrial streetlights, fragments of infrastructure, and artificial light sources — the artist constructs a visual grammar in which light becomes a constructive force. His works, often simple in form yet complex in effect, generate new ways of looking at everyday life and the city, with its rhythms and materials.

Born in Hong Kong in 1969 and raised in London, Handforth studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, an environment deeply committed to sculptural experimentation. Since 1992, he has lived and worked in Miami, a city whose artificial light, heterogeneous landscape, and layered visual culture have decisively shaped his imagination. Over time, he has developed an articulated exhibition practice, alternating museum installations with large-scale public projects, always centered on the relationship between environment, matter, and light.

In Handforth’s work, light plays a structural role. Elements such as neon tubes, streetlamps, or fluorescent lights are woven into compositions that use luminosity as line, sign, or surface. The artist often intervenes on the chromatic component, filtering light through colored gels or studying how illumination behaves on metallic surfaces. The outcome is a luminous geometry that alters spatial perception, creating zones of intensity, expanded shadows, or unexpected reflections.

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