Wallace Chan
Vessels of Other Worlds
Venice
Santa Maria Della Pietà
May 8 – Oct 18, 2026
Shanghai
Long Museum West Bund
Jul 18 – Oct 25, 2026
Coinciding with the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, Wallace Chan presents Vessels of Other Worlds, a dual-site exhibition unfolding between Venice and Shanghai. Opening on 8 May 2026 at the Chapel of Santa Maria della Pietà in Venice, and continuing from 18 July 2026 at the Long Museum in Shanghai, the project is curated by James Putnam and establishes a transcontinental dialogue between two cities historically defined by water, reflection, and exchange.
At the core of the exhibition is oil, or Olea Sancta, a substance that, across cultures and religions, has long functioned as a medium of purification, protection, and consecration. Used in rituals in Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam, oil embodies a shared understanding of transformation and spiritual continuity. Chan reimagines this material not as substance alone, but as a conceptual thread linking different systems of belief.
In Venice, three titanium vessels are installed within the Chapel’s altar space, each corresponding to a stage of life—birth, growth, and rebirth. Their surfaces are articulated with figures, creatures, and symbolic motifs drawn from Chinese mythology, forming a sculptural cosmology that expands across their forms. Suspended elements surrounding them suggest the dispersal of oil in space, extending the vessels into a wider field of circulation and movement.
The works are conceived in relation to monumental counterparts in Shanghai, where each vessel reaches up to ten metres high. The central vessel, Growth, includes an interior space where viewers can enter and discover its mirrored surfaces and apertures that generate a kaleidoscopic environment. This recalls Chan’s pioneering gemstone carving technique, the “Wallace Cut,” extending its logic into architectural and perceptual experience.
Although physically distant, the Shanghai works are present in Venice through a triptych of screens transmitting live footage from the artist’s workshop and exhibition. These images reveal shifting perspectives and close-up details, operating not as documentation but as an extension of the sculptural field. In this sense, the camera introduces what Walter Benjamin described as an “optical unconscious,” revealing dimensions of the work beyond immediate perception.
Through this system of transmission, the Chapel becomes a site where material presence and mediated image coexist. Vessels of Other Worlds thus proposes a sculptural language that unfolds across space and time, linking distant locations while reflecting on transformation, perception, and the persistence of meaning.
