Wallace Chan’s Dual-Site Exhibition Bridges Not Only Geography But Also Matter, Energy, Past and Future |
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Wallace Chan’s Dual-Site Exhibition Bridges Not Only Geography But Also Matter, Energy, Past and Future
"Vessels of Other Worlds" is currently on view in Venice at the Chapel of Santa Maria della Pietà, with a parallel presentation set to open at the Long Museum in Shanghai in July.
Cultures and religions across latitudes have developed their own cosmologies, but most share some notion of worlds within worlds, mazes and labyrinths that articulate the vital entanglement between microcosm and macrocosm, between the celestial and the terrestrial. His career as a jeweler and craftsman contributed to Wallace Chan’s deep knowledge of geological time and his attunement to the cosmic dimension—an awareness that finds full expression in his art. Working with crystals and gems, Chan creates his own mythology of time, cyclical transformation and the perpetual possibility of renewal.
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A monumental two-chapter exhibition by the Chinese artist is unfolding this season across two cities historically connected by water and by many threads of trade and cultural exchange: Venice and Shanghai. Supported by the Long Museum, the show marks the most ambitious project to date for the world-renowned sculptor, who has redefined contemporary jewelry.
In Chan’s practice, the distance between jewelry, sculpture, engineering and metaphysics collapses. After launching his career as a gemstone carver, he has since spent more than 50 years developing a material language in which jewelry is not ornament but sculpture at the scale of the body, while sculpture becomes, in his words, a jewel for space.
During the busy opening week of the Venice Biennale, Observer engaged in a deep conversation with the Chinese master at “Vessels of Other Worlds,” his show in the chapel of Santa Maria della Pietà, facing the Grand Canal. As we spoke, time and space seemed suspended inside the energetic capsule he had created, which reactivated and expanded the potential of that sacred space.
Inside the chapel, three stratified titanium vessels inspired by the three sacred oils, the Olea Sancta, are surrounded by a constellation of suspended titanium sculptures suggesting oil drops in motion and representing the flow of matter and energy. Around them, human and other biological entities multiply, suggesting connection and vital interrelation within the cycle of life and evolution. Gemstones, insects, vessels, faces, water, light and cosmic imagery repeat and blend, as Chan treats scale as a matter of perception rather than hierarchy. Here, a jewel can contain an........