Wallace Chan 陳世英
In 2026, as he turns 70, the Hong Kong-based artist Wallace Chan presents Vessels of Other Worlds, a dual-site exhibition unfolding between Venice and Shanghai. The show opens at the Chapel of Santa Maria della Pietà during the 61st Venice Biennale in May and at the Long Museum in Shanghai’s West Bund in July. Venice drifts on water, dense with memory, while Shanghai flourishes from river and sea, charged with contemporary velocity. Between them, the new works shift in scale, in atmosphere, in the very texture of looking. The exhibition revolves around three monumental sculptures – Birth, Growth and Death. Working in titanium – unyielding yet unexpectedly lightweight, industrial yet capable of catching and bending light – Chan situates the pieces somewhere between sculpture, architecture and instrument. Each is several metres tall and composed of thousands of components, within which smaller, almost cellular elements suggest hidden systems at work. For Chan, material is not inert but has an existence with its internal logic. Titanium resists, reflects, recalibrates. Making, in this context, becomes a prolonged negotiation, an …
