Between the Long Museum in Shanghai and Venice, Wallace Chan turns 70: a journey through monumental sculptures, precious butterflies and eternal titanium.
“A wound releases its own light, surgeons say,” he wrote Anne Carsonthe 2026 Nobel Prize winner poet. And in the silent, elegant brutalist building that houses the Long Museum (West Bund) of Shanghai the wounds of Wallace Chan they illuminate with a disturbing light. Blue and black, mammoth pagodas where, like in a kaleidoscope, we find ourselves immersed in our nightmares, shadows that lengthen under the steps of visitors, silent sculptures that seem to hold a silent pain. The Chinese artist, who lived in Hong Kongcollected by the most famous institutions in the world (from British Museum of London at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston) celebrates its 70th birthday with two surprising exhibitions entitled Vessels of other worldsedited by James Putnam. One was inaugurated during the 61st Venice International Art Biennialin the Chapel of Santa Maria della Pietà and the other can still be visited, until October 25, in China in the private museum founded by billionaire collectors Liu Yiqian and wife Wang Wei.
Corridors, dark passages that lead through “the containers of other worlds” into an intimate imaginary, a journey into the mind of its creator, as in the famous 1966 science fiction film, Disturbing journey. The myth and the titans, birth and death, lo Yin and of course it is Yang. Water is the fundamental element, panta rei, everything flows, contains, reflects, changes continuously. Nothing can be held back: emotions, the passing of time, our most precious moments. The images refer to the amniotic fluid that protects us in the maternal womb, to birth and to that pain which no one can escape: the cutting of the umbilical cord, the separation from the mother. Then life forces us to look at death every day. For Wallace, only through art can there be rebirth. Tout se tient, even if it’s a lot of stuff, let’s face it. Yet he, who was born under the sign of Scorpio, the symbol par excellence of the Phoenix, manages to keep everything together. In an instant we move from the visible, i.e. the monstrous and fascinating winged creatures, to an immaterial, spiritual and otherworldly dimension, that of the works of black obsidianwhich seem to come from another world (and perhaps they really come from Space, because after a few wanders in the labyrinths many will seem to be among the set of Gattaca and a short story by Isaac Asimov). Gigantic heads of titanium«the material closest to eternity», says the artist, which hide other figures within them, growths that stretch out to show multiform thoughts. Titanium, so ductile and strong, is a favorite material and defies time. Yet even in this supposed eternity we cannot help but fall apart, dividing ourselves into a thousand personalities, forced to look for ourselves among thread-like totems, which recall the essentiality of the immense Alberto Giacometti. Up to a poetic black tulip, which stands alone, fragile.
From Fuzhou gems to indestructible porcelain: the alchemy of matter
The legend, or rather the storytelling, tells of a very poor childhood: he left on a boat with his family from Fuzhou towards Hong Kong, where at sixteen he was already a skilled carver, and then became the most famous jeweler in the country. Creator of precious objects, inventor of “Wallace cut” to make the stones brighter. Cuts, wounds and light, once again. In the last rooms his precious butterfly-shaped brooches with enchanting colors are displayed. The ephemeral unites with the brevity of beauty. And then necklaces and rings made of a white porcelain created by him to be more resistant than iron.
The silence of the cemeteries and the obsession of the present
Buddhist, for a period he dedicated himself to monastic lifesays he loves meditation in the silence of cemeteries, an alchemist who is very skilled at bending materials with the aim of making his art immortal. Eternalize yourself, this is the desire. Impossible to give him an age: long white beard and a shirt Brooks Brothers without even the slightest crease. He explains during a refined Italian cuisine breakfast offered inside the Long Museum: «In such a complex world, only if you get used to erasing memories can you create. Forgetting is the surest way to protect ourselves from pain. You just have to live in the present. As we say in China: once something has been said, then it is already in the past.” Whether it is love or nostalgia for what we have lost. Everything slips away. Nothing remains, there primordial creation. Sometimes it’s not easy to look forward, but the past is a crumbling trick that Wallace knows how to avoid.
The vertigo of the large cages and the emptiness of the room of shadows
The most impressive part of the solo show are the mammoth sculptures up to ten meters high inside which you can stand, surrounded by blue and violet light, by objects that refract in the numerous mirrors, reflecting his illusory world, and for a moment ours too. Naked children like cherubs chase each other around, spinning wheels, heads of monstrous beings. “It’s a physical, spiritual, transcendental experience,” he says. All together perhaps it’s a bit much for our simple Western souls. These elaborate structures appear baroque, small kitsch containers crammed with turtles, octopuses, lotus flowers, zodiac signs, broken clock mechanisms, looming stalactites. Yet, abandoning them to pass into the room of shadows, every visitor will experience a subtle anguish. After giving us so much opulence, he leaves us alone, in the void. Peter Pan now too grown up we look for ourselves on the bare walls, chasing our image in vain. Who escapes into time and the deceptive space he created. Fortunately, outside the labyrinth there is no Alice’s Evil Queen ready to behead us (because the whole thing seems like a lysergic journey), but the calm of the Huangpu River. A little girl runs on roller skates, Wallace Chan smiles and disappears beyond the exit.
