Wallace Chan: TOTEM | 20.4-23.10.2022

Wallace Chan: TOTEM | 20.4-23.10.2022
Fondaco Marcello, Venice

Chinese multidisciplinary artist Wallace Chan, who has pioneered titanium’s unprecedented use for large-scale sculptures, presents his sculpture exhibition TOTEM at the Fondaco Marcello in Venice, launching during the opening week of the 59th Venice Biennale.

TOTEM is a large-scale installation of the unassembled parts of Wallace Chan’s 10-metre-high sculpture made of iron beams and carefully modelled titanium heads of various sizes. The installation presents an interactive relationship between the work and the exhibition space, encouraging viewers to approach the parts closely and to view them from various angles. Chan invites visitors to experience these different perspectives as they wander among the sculptural elements, transforming their static completeness into an expansive ‘universe’ composed of many parts.

In this documentary, James Putnam, the curator of TOTEM, and Venetian architect Francesco Da Mosto talk about the theme of the exhibition, how Wallace Chan’s Buddhist background and the idea of “self” and “non-self” are embodied in his work, as well as the instinct and introspective thought patterns that drive Wallace Chan’s approach to sculptural form.
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Francesco: “James, could you share with us the idea behind this exhibition? Why TOTEM? What does it mean?”

James: “Totem means a sort of ancestral spirit. One of the main things behind this exhibition is perhaps the biggest society problem. People think that we are separated from nature, we are apart from nature, rather than part of nature… When you look at that statue, the enigmatic face that Mr Chan uses characteristically in his work is symbol of the earth. We are obviously at a state where man is encroaching on the delicate balance of the earth. This exhibition is really about that fine balance between nature and humans on earth.”

Francesco: “I think Wallace draws on the East and the West, the past and the future. His faces seem like both to be timeless and at a certain time transcendental.”

James: “It’s a characteristic of his work. You see that face all the time in his work. Like you said, it’s kind of merger between his Buddhist background, looking at the typical enigmatical face, but also the sculptures that he saw in Christian cemeteries in China when he’s growing up. It is sort of a combination of these two iconic graphic elements.”
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About the exhibition: https://wallacechan.shorthandstories....

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