DIRECTORY 2026

Masaaki Hasegawa | Painting

Masaaki Hasegawa is a multidisciplinary artist and author based in Spain. His practice approaches painting not as image-making, but as a ritualised condition, an embodied cognitive process grounded in attention, sensation, and physical action. The work does not begin with representation or the intention to communicate meaning; it begins with the regulation and release of bodily presence.
Working primarily with acrylic for its irreversible temporal properties, Hasegawa preserves immediacy rather than refinement. He employs non-conventional tools, including flowers and calligraphy brushes, chosen for their capacity to intensify tactile feedback and alter pressure, rhythm, and resistance. These instruments shape the perceptual conditions in which decisions unfold. Informed by long-term training in martial arts and analytical disciplines, painting becomes a controlled situation of heightened sensitivity. Meaning emerges internally through embodied experience rather than metaphor. The resulting works function as residual traces of transient states—evidence of moments when cognition, sensation, and action briefly converge, accepting impermanence as fundamental to both perception and form.
Hasegawa has realised large-scale projects and exhibited internationally across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, including a 1,926-square-meter site-specific work in Madrid. His works are held in private and institutional collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Calligraphy, Instituto de Empresa, Kyiv Academy of Media Arts, and Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts.

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