Long Museum West Bund – ARTOMITY 藝源

Wallace Chan: Vessels of Other Worlds – A Dual-Site Exhibition in Venice and Shanghai

Wallace Chan /Vessels of Other Worlds / ShanghaiLong Museum West BundJul 18 – Oct 25, 2026 VeniceSanta Maria Della PietàMay 8 – Oct 18, 2026 wallace-chan.com This July, Wallace Chan: Vessels of Other Worlds arrives at Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai after opening in Venice at the Chapel of Santa Maria della Pietà on 8 May 2026. Curated by James Putnam, the dual-site exhibition unfolds in the year of Chan’s 70th birthday. The Shanghai presentation gives the project its largest form. Three titanium vessels, rising to approximately seven, eight and ten metres, will occupy the galleries of Long Museum West Bund. Their scale changes the conditions of viewing. What appeared in Venice within the charged intimacy of a sacred space becomes, in Shanghai, a set of environments large enough to enter, circle and inhabit. The vessels are organised around birth, growth and rebirth, and take inspiration from Olea Sancta, or sacred oil. In religious tradition, sacred oil is associated with purification, protection, consecration and spiritual continuity. Chan does not illustrate these associations directly. Instead, he treats …

Wallace Chan: Vessels of Other Worlds – A Dual-Site Exhibition in Venice and Shanghai

Published by Artomity Magazine

Wallace Chan /Vessels of Other Worlds / Venice /Santa Maria Della PietàMay 8 – Oct 18, 2026 Shanghai /Long Museum West BundJul 18 – Oct 25, 2026 wallace-chan.com To coincide with the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Wallace Chan presents Vessels of Other Worlds, a dual-site exhibition unfolding between Venice and Shanghai. The project marks the artist’s 70th birthday and introduces a new body of monumental titanium sculpture. Curated by James Putnam, the exhibition extends Chan’s longstanding investigation into material innovation, metaphysics, and scale. At the Pietà Chapel, three titanium vessels reference the Olea Sancta — the sacred oils used in Catholic rites — and are structured around the triad of birth, growth, and death/rebirth. Their biomorphic and architectonic forms evoke the layered cosmologies of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, while remaining grounded in Chan’s sculptural language. Installed within the Chapel’s altar space, a triptych of video screens operates as a live conduit to Shanghai, collapsing geographical distance and situating the exhibition within a transcontinental framework. At the Long Museum, the …