Titans

Along with his jewellery practice Wallace Chan has continued to create distinctive sculptures and some works are included in this exhibition. His large freestanding titanium and iron sculpture ‘Titans I’ at the exhibition’s entrance helps to demonstrate this unique interrelationship between Chan’s two diverse art forms. This work specifically refers to the ‘Wallace Cut’, a celebrated gemstone carving process that he invented in 1987 that creates an illusion of five carved faces inside a single gemstone, but only the central one is carved while the faces on each side are merely reflections. With this large-scale sculpture the faces are modelled in both relief and intaglio and can be viewed from multiple angles and thus conceptually subvert the rationality of a single reading or truth. This was part of a series of titanium sculptures that Chan first showed at the 2021 Venice Biennale. The exhibition was called ‘Titans’ since titanium is named after these mighty, immortal mythical beings because the metal’s attributes are strength, lightness and longevity.

Titanium is a difficult metal to work, with a high melting point of around 1,700°C and is used mainly in the aerospace industry. After eight years of careful research and experimentation, Chan developed a unique method using it, first for jewellery and then for sculptures that are unprecedented at this scale. By putting titanium alongside iron he sets up a dialogue between the two materials so that its lightness and durability dramatically contrasts with iron’s weightiness and susceptibility to corrosion. Meanwhile the russet colour of the oxidized iron provides a striking counterpoint to the polished silver surface of the titanium. Juxtaposing these two very different materials not only focuses on their opposite characteristics, but also alludes to the wider notion dualism that pervades Chan’s work reflecting the ancient Chinese philosophy of yin and yang. This colossal face is a recurrent motif in his sculptures, whose features are calm, with a peaceful aura and an enigmatic expression that seems to reference Buddhist imagery. It also evokes a sense of both the past and the future, as it can represent an ancient archetype or even something from science fiction. It conveys a sense of concentration and invites the viewer’s gaze to penetrate its peaceful, idealized Buddha-like face with its exaggerated ears, features that have their origins in the gemstone carvings of Chinese folklore goddesses he made in his formative years. His skills at creating both miniature sculptures as jewellery and monumental sculptures seemingly give him the unique insight into the connection between the Microcosm and Macrocosm that characterizes his practice.

In the West Room of Christie’s Chan has installed a series of hanging sculptures suspended like pendulums as if to suggest a sense of balance and equilibrium. This creates a play on weight and weightlessness that helps to conjure up a floating and haunting quality with the strange, compressed perspective of their faces causing their appearance to shift as the observer walks around each sculpture. The silvery titanium seems to evoke the flowing liminal state of the molten metal, which highlights its materiality, while at the same time expresses a sense of transience and ephemerality. A particularly striking example is Titans XIII where the serene face motif is distorted into an elongated, twisted spiral form as if finally melting into a globule of molten titanium on the floor. There is a tension between its outward sensuality that creates an illusion of lightness versus the distancing effect of its material weight. In this respect these works go beyond their outward figuration and relate to profound sculptural concerns of space, materiality, and the play of surface light and shadow on their surfaces.

James Putnam, April 2023