In this exclusive interview, he reflects on the ideas behind the exhibition, the dialogue between its Shanghai and Venice presentations, and the spiritual philosophy that shapes his work.
How do Buddhist ideas of non-attachment coexist with precious materials?
– For me, non-attachment does not mean rejecting beauty, matter, value or desire. It means not being possessed by them. As the saying goes, “人心起，道心亡；道心起，人心亡” — when the ordinary, grasping mind arises, the mind of the Way disappears; when the mind of the Way arises, the grasping mind falls away.
A gemstone may be extremely rare, but in my hands it is not only a sign of wealth. It is light, time, pressure, earth, memory and transformation. When I work with precious materials, I try to release them from the idea of possession. I want them to become vessels for thought and spirit.
Their value is not only in price, but in what they can awaken in us. Buddhist thought has taught me that everything is changing. Even the hardest stone carries impermanence. Even the most precious object is empty if the heart cannot see beyond ownership.
What does Shanghai allow the vessels to become that Venice does not?
I am always interested in finding harmony in differences. Venice and Shanghai are very different cities, with different rhythms, histories, and cultural energies. I see those differences as a possibility. What matters to me is that the spiritual core of the work remains true, while each city allows a different aspect of it to unfold. In Venice, the work becomes more inward, more intimate, more closely connected to memory, silence, and ritual. In Shanghai, it opens out into a larger, more monumental and contemporary presence. The differences remain, but they are held together by one living idea.
What, exactly, is the vessel carrying between Venice and Shanghai?
Vessels of Other Worlds was inspired very directly by Venice. In a Catholic church there, I saw the carving of three oil vessels on a stone, and that image stayed with me. It made me curious. Very quickly, I understood that the vessel is not only a Catholic image. Across cultures and religions, in churches and temples alike, the vessel appears again and again as a form connected to blessing, ritual, transformation, and passage. That was the beginning of the work. I wanted to take this iconography and rebuild it through my own belief system.
The exhibition then grew into a larger meditation on birth, growth, and rebirth. In Venice, the works draw on the Olea Sancta, the three sacred oils used in Catholic blessing rituals, while also absorbing the visionary energy of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. From the beginning, I did not want the vessels to feel closed or merely symbolic. I wanted them to remain open and empty, because emptiness is potential. It is the space where life, memory, spirit, and transformation can enter. That is why these vessels are also forms of passage.
Are the repeated human profiles portraits, archetypes, or structural units?
The figures and motifs that appear on the surfaces of my sculptures are not intended to represent specific individuals or narratives. They are manifestations of an inner being—a state of existence that exists somewhere between the human, the spiritual, and the material world.
The recurring figures are deliberately androgynous. They are neither male nor female, neither child nor elder. For me, there is something sacred in this state of ambiguity, because it suggests a condition beyond ordinary identity. The figures represent a kind of inner consciousness rather than an external portrait.
You may notice that their eyes are only one-third open. This small opening looks outward toward the human world, toward material existence and everything visible. The remaining two-thirds turn inward, toward the invisible realm of thought, spirit, and imagination. The face becomes not simply a representation of a person, but a reflection of an interior landscape.
Toddlers/babies are another recurring element in my work. They are not only figures, but symbols of curiosity, openness, and the beginning of perception. Their number also carries different possibilities of meaning: one child may suggest solitude or contemplation; two may represent dialogue and connection; three may introduce exchange, tension, or debate; four may evoke cycles in nature, such as the four seasons. Numbers create another layer of storytelling within the sculpture.
Ultimately, these figures, creatures, and motifs are ways of exploring the relationship between the visible and the invisible. Through the language of light, reflection, material, and symbolism, I hope to create works that reveal multiple worlds at once.
Is the Wallace Cut now operating at the scale of architecture?
I began as a gemstone carver in 1973, and for most of my life, my world has unfolded under a microscope. I see the world within the microcosm, and I often imagine myself as small as an ant, wandering about in that micro-realm. Now, I am transforming that kaleidoscopic world seen under the microscope into monumental sculptures. This fulfils a long-held desire of mine: to step inside the work. So it is not simply that I want the audience to enter the work; I myself have always wanted to step into that world constructed by light, form, space, and illusion. Now that the scale of the work has changed, this imagination can finally be realised.
The Wallace Cut began with a very small opening. In a perfectly transparent gemstone, I carve from behind, keeping what I don’t need and removing what I need. With precise calculation, and thus reflection, one face becomes four more faces. Only the one face in the middle is carved, the two faces on each side are merely illusions.
With Growth, I wanted to reverse that experience. Instead of asking the eye to enter a gemstone, I wanted the whole body to enter the optical world. The principle is related, but the challenge is completely different. A gemstone is intimate; the hand, the tool and the breath are very close. A titanium vessel at 8 metres high involves structure, balance, engineering, movement, reflection and the safety of the human body inside the work. The illusion is no longer held in the palm. It becomes architectural.
To translate the Wallace Cut into this scale was not simply to enlarge a technique. Enlargement alone has no meaning. I had to ask: what happens when reflection is no longer only visual, but bodily? What happens when the viewer is not looking at an illusion, but standing inside one? Inside Growth, the mirrors multiply the body. The slow rotation is almost imperceptible. You think you are still standing in the same place, but the world around you is already changing. Your image breaks apart, returns, disappears, and appears again. In that moment, the work is not only reflecting you; it is asking you to feel how unstable the self can be.
For me, standing inside Growth is a very strange and moving experience. It is like entering the interior of a stone, but also entering the interior of consciousness. I spent many years creating worlds inside gemstones.
Now, for the first time, I can stand inside that world myself. The small has become vast.
Does monumental scale change meaning, or only intensify it?
Working on a large scale does not mean simply making something bigger. For me, the monumental must still begin from the microscopic. A screw, a gear, a figure, a small curve, a line of light — each detail must carry life. Only when these details come together can the work become a larger body.
Jewellery is very intimate. It lives close to the skin. It moves with the body, breathes with the body, and changes the way a person feels their own presence. A small sculpture or a jewel can contain a universe, but the viewer usually enters it through the eye, through attention, through closeness.
With these monumental sculptures, the relationship changes. The viewer no longer only looks at the work; the viewer stands before it, walks around it, and in the case of Growth, enters it. The body becomes part of the experience. You feel your own scale, your own movement, your own breath, your own vulnerability. You may feel very small in front of the work, but because of that, your perception becomes larger.
This scale also allows me to turn the vessel into a space. The work is no longer only an object; it becomes a passage. It can hold light, sound, reflection, movement, and the presence of the viewer. It can make birth, growth and rebirth something one does not only understand intellectually, but experiences physically.
So I do not see this as leaving jewellery behind. I am carrying the same questions into another dimension. In jewellery, I build a world within a stone. In sculpture, I allow the viewer’s body to enter that world.
Why did the brooch become such an important sculptural form for you?
The brooch became important to me because it is the freest form.
A ring must follow the finger, a necklace must follow the neck, earrings must follow the ears. But a brooch can go almost anywhere on the body. It has no fixed position, no fixed direction, no fixed relationship with the wearer. It can rest on the shoulder, the chest, the waist, or move with the body like a living creature.
That freedom is very close to sculpture. A brooch is small, but it has space, movement, volume and presence. It is not only decoration; it can become a small sculpture travelling with the body.
For me, the brooch is where jewellery becomes most liberated. It allows imagination to fly. That is why butterflies often appear in my brooches: they carry lightness, movement, transformation and freedom.
Read more about Wallace Chan as a jewelry artist here.
What remains in your work from your period of Zen monastic practice?
My thinking is deeply shaped by Buddhist philosophy. During the six months I spent as a monk in the early 2000s, I came to reflect more deeply on the idea that all phenomena are created by the mind. There is also the concept of du (度), “to cross over,” which has remained very important to me. From Birth and Growth to Rebirth, these vessels return to the origin of human existence. They are about mindfulness, reflection, and the understanding that life is lived only moment by moment. And yet each moment contains the causes and conditions of all the moments to come.
At the heart of this exhibition is also a concern with the condition of contemporary life. I believe that many of our problems begin with desire — with comparison, calculation, and the constant measuring of ourselves against others. This draws us away from what truly matters. My vessels are created with the wish to help sentient beings “cross over,” beginning with a movement beyond ignorance — not through knowledge alone, but through wisdom. They offer time and space for contemplation, for self-reflection, and for a deeper awareness of our relation to one another and to the universe.
What kind of failure should a young artist not be afraid of?
A young artist, or an old one, should not be afraid of failure.
How does the work change between the Pietà Chapel and the Long Museum?
I think the two sites do operate very differently but each site functions very effectively individually. The Pietà Chapel in Venice is charged with sacred and historical associations, while the Long Museum in Shanghai operates within a contemporary institutional framework. he Venice installation emphasizes ritual and spiritual resonance that evoke preservation, memory, and historical continuity. In contrast the Shanghai installation relates more to urban growth, modernity, industrial-modern sensibility, progress and looking towards the future. The dual sites need to leave room for multiple interpretive pathways and the exhibition gains depth when it acknowledges the interconnected histories of the cities of Venice and Shanghai through the spatial relationships of the two exhibitions. This dialogue does not merely connect the two places technologically but creates an additional conceptual space that exists through the resonance, and exchange between them. In this respect I don’t think the Venice audience ‘missed’ anything, as they were able to view Chan’s ‘Vessels’ in the context of the Biennale, which often uses Venice as a conceptual framework, a ‘time capsule’ suspended between past and future. The live footage of both venues also adds an intriguing additional element that offers a link and dialogue between both sites, bridging their geographical distance through real time technology.
