From 18 July to 25 October 2026, the Long Museum (West Bund) will present Vessels of other worlds, the solo exhibition by Wallace Chan.

Vessels of other worlds coincides with the artist’s 70th birthday and it is Wallace Chan’s most ambitious project to date. Curated by James Putnam, the exhibition unfolds across Venice and Shanghai, creating a symbolic dialogue between the two cities, while exploring the themes of transformation, memory and spirituality through a new body of monumental titanium sculptures.

In Shanghai, visitors at the Long Museum are guided through a sequence of passages and corridors that trace the evolution of Chan’s artistic practice, referencing his previous Venice Biennale presentations - Titans (2021), Totem (2022) and Transcendence (2024). This journey culminates in an expansive space where three towering forms come into view.

First introduced in Venice, these works are restaged in Shanghai at an unprecedented scale, reaching seven, eight and ten metres in height. In Venice, the exhibition’s tripartite structure is staged within the Pietà Chapel, where three video screens placed on the altar form a triptych and act as a conceptual portal, revealing the monumental works presented in Shanghai.

Through this dual configuration, the exhibition draws upon the cultural resonances that connect Venice and Shanghai - two cities historically shaped by their relationship to water - inviting reflection on materiality and transcendence, presence and absence, and the fluid boundaries between physical and immaterial space.

Inspired by Olea Sancta - the sacred oils used in Catholic rites of blessing and purification, the sculptures evoke continuous cycles of birth, growth and rebirth through subtle chromatic shifts of yellow, red and blue. For Chan, the vessel functions as a metaphor for the human body, capable of holding the intangible dimensions of time, emotion and consciousness.

A pioneer in the artistic use of titanium, a material more often associated with technological advancement, Chan continues to challenge conventional approaches to sculpture, transforming the industrial material into poetic and atmospheric forms.

Composed of thousands of titanium components, these sculptures balance technical precision with symbolic imagination. Their surfaces are populated with human figures, mythical creatures and references to Chinese mythology, alongside recurring motifs such as distorted infants in motion and suspended faces that suggest titanium in a molten state. The central work incorporates an architectural threshold leading into a kaleidoscopic interior, where refracted views generated through Chan’s illusionistic carving innovation, the Wallace Cut, create everchanging visual encounters and expand ideas of perception and multiplicity into a participatory experience.

The Shanghai presentation extends the development of Chan’s practice from monumental sculpture toward spatial environments shaped by metaphysical inquiry, particularly through themes of transformation and transcendence. Vessels of other worlds unfolds simultaneously in Venice and Shanghai through live transmission and mirrored installations, dissolving geographic distance and reconfiguring sculpture as a network of cultural, spiritual, and perceptual exchange.

Wallace Chan says, “I build the monumental from the microscopic. To me, this is how the universe takes form: vast presences arise from the unseen and the minute. Stars are born from particles; mountains and rivers gather from dust; life grows from cells. My works, too, are slowly built into something greater than myself.”