SHANGHAI.- Wallace Chan’s most ambitious sculptural project to date is now on view at the Long Museum (West Bund), where Vessels of Other Worlds has opened its Shanghai chapter after debuting in Venice earlier this year.

Curated by James Putnam, the exhibition brings together a new body of monumental titanium sculptures that explore transformation, memory and spirituality. The Shanghai presentation, which opened on July 18 and runs through October 25, forms one half of a dual-site project linking the Long Museum with the Chapel of Santa Maria della Piet� in Venice.

The project also coincides with Chan’s 70th birthday and marks a significant expansion of a practice that has long moved between the intimate scale of jewelry and carving and the architectural possibilities of sculpture and installation.

At the Long Museum, visitors move through a sequence of corridors tracing the evolution of Chan’s recent work before arriving in a vast space occupied by three towering sculptures. The works rise to seven, eight and ten meters, making them among the largest pieces the Hong Kong-based artist has created.

The scale is dramatic, but Chan’s approach remains rooted in minute detail. Each sculpture is assembled from thousands of titanium components, with surfaces inhabited by human figures, mythical creatures and references to Chinese mythology. Distorted infants, suspended faces and fluid-looking forms appear across the structures, giving the industrial metal an unexpectedly organic quality.

Chan has spent decades pushing titanium beyond its conventional technological associations. In his hands, the metal becomes reflective, atmospheric and almost weightless despite the physical scale of the works. The exhibition extends this long investigation into a fully immersive environment, where sculpture, architecture and perception begin to merge.





One of the central works incorporates an architectural threshold that visitors can enter. Inside, Chan’s illusionistic carving technique, known as the Wallace Cut, produces a kaleidoscopic interior of shifting reflections and refracted views, turning the sculpture into an experience that changes as the viewer moves through it.

The exhibition takes inspiration from Olea Sancta, the sacred oils used in Catholic rites of blessing and purification. Subtle shifts of yellow, red and blue evoke cycles of birth, growth and rebirth. For Chan, the vessel itself becomes a metaphor for the human body — a container capable of holding less tangible things such as time, memory, emotion and consciousness.

The relationship between Venice and Shanghai is central to the project. Both cities have been profoundly shaped by water, and Chan and Putnam use that shared history as a framework for thinking about movement, distance and exchange. In Venice, three video screens placed on the altar of the Piet� Chapel function as a triptych and conceptual portal to the monumental works in Shanghai. Live transmission and mirrored installations connect the two venues, allowing the exhibition to exist simultaneously across continents.
“I build the monumental from the microscopic,” Chan has said of the project, describing the way vast forms emerge from tiny elements in both nature and his own work. “Stars are born from particles; mountains and rivers gather from dust; life grows from cells.”

The Shanghai exhibition also places Vessels of Other Worlds within the broader trajectory of Chan’s recent monumental projects, including Titans (2021), Totem (2022) and Transcendence (2024). Together, they chart his move from highly intricate object-making toward large-scale environments concerned with questions of matter, spirit and existence.

Chan, who began carving as a teenager in 1973, is known for a series of technical innovations developed over more than five decades. His practice spans jewelry, carving, sculpture and installation, and his work is held in collections including the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Shanghai Museum and the Long Museum.
Alongside the Shanghai presentation, the Venice chapter of Vessels of Other Worlds remains on view at the Piet� Chapel through October 18. Chan is also presenting Wallace Chan: Mythos at Scala Contarini del Bovolo in Venice through the same date.

Wallace Chan: Vessels of Other Worlds
Long Museum (West Bund), Shanghai
Through October 25, 2026