Leelee Chan

Art|Basel 🇭🇰 with @capsuleshanghai @galerieklemms Echoes booth ЗC11 Cambium Wanderer, 2024. 125 × 116 × 17 cm “LEELEE CHAN’s sculptures investigate the porous boundaries between industrial infrastructure and organic growth. In “Cambium Wanderer” (2024), a found plastic shipping pallet is transformed into an arcane wall relic entwined with root forms, bronze wildflowers, and amber resin. Drawing on the cambium - the living layer beneath a tree’s bark responsible for growth - as well as from the sprawling tree roots that reclaim the urban environment in Hong Kong, the work evokes parallels between subterranean root systems and the global circulation of goods that pallets enable.” #leeleechan #galerieklemms #capsuleshanghai

Upcoming Exhibition👀 Leelee Chan: Hybrid Palimpsests —— Layers of time, memory, and matter. 🪨⚙️ On March 20, 2026, HEM Young Artist Program presents Hybrid Palimpsests, a solo exhibition by artist Leelee Chan. @doubleleechan Over the past seven years, Chan has transformed urban debris, ancient artifacts, and industrial products into dynamic constellations that traverse geological, cultural, and industrial timeframes. Like a palimpsest—written, erased, and rewritten—her work reveals what persists beneath the surface. From hand-carved stone encasing stainless steel spirals to plastic shipping pallets inlaid with ancient obsidian, the exhibition reflects on extraction, circulation, and the afterlives of matter. —— 📅 Opens March 20, 2026 📍 HEM Art Museum Gallery 5 💙 Photos: Copyright of the artist. Courtesy of the artist and Capsule @capsuleshanghai and Klemm’s @galerieklemms Artist portrait by Diana Pfammatter #heartmuseum #leeleechan #contemporanyart #HybridPalimpsests —— Which layer are you most curious about? Tell us below. 👇

Belated post art week wrap up 🧘🏻‍♀️. It was so special to collaborate with @galerieklemms and @capsuleshanghai again, and to show my works alongside the amazing @elizabethjaeger and @milaxinyue 🐦‍⬛🍁

There are definitely more than 8 Hong Kong artists to watch within the art community, but I am still thankful to be included in this feature 🙏🏼🇭🇰 Thanks for the editor Gennady Oreshkin @justgennady and Manifesto Asia @manifestomedia

Thank you @jc_jonathancheung and @tang747 for including me for the GQ’s Hong Kong issue, among many talented friends and peers! 💖✍🏻

⚡️⚡️⚡️Last day of Art|Basel Hong Kong, don’t miss our booth in the Echoes section at 3C11 ⚡️⚡️⚡️ Showing new works alongside the amazing Elizabeth Jaeger and Yan Xinyue. The presentation brings together three singular artistic practices that reflect on materiality, form, and the conditions of perception. Spanning sculpture and painting, the booth is shaped by a nuanced interplay of tension and delicacy, density and openness, intimacy and scale. Each artist articulates a distinct visual language, while subtle correspondences emerge in their treatment of surface, structure, and effect. Together, the works create a presentation that is both formally precise and sensorially charged. @galerieklemms @capsuleshanghai @elizabethjaeger @milaxinyue @artbasel

I’m showing two new works with @capsuleshanghai and @galerieklemms in ArtBasel Hong Kong. Come say hi if you are in the city. We are at booth 3C11 in the Echoes section. SENSITIVE CIRCUIT , 2026 found stone and lost-wax cast bronze 105 x 38 x 13cm ；411/2×15x5 in . . #leeleechan #sculpture #galerieklemms #capsuleshanghai

For a sculpture this big, the details are still mesmerizing to me. Intimate moments that I always hope to reinvigorate the viewer’s perception. 🔬🪐 Photo by @darren_chau Darren Chau #geology #microspace #cosmology #leeleechan #capsuleshanghai

🌱🌱🌱 Nestling Bi, an ambiguous biomorphic form crafted from onyx, shaped like a Bi (璧) disc, nestles within an elongated, leaf-shaped bronze structure. This bronze element extends from the ground, tapering off as it ascends into space. The sculpture is balanced by a mechanical form amalgamated with oversized, ubiquitous everyday objects, including plastic egg packaging, a hex nut, and a crystal chandelier bead. The heavyweight onyx and bronze are transformed into an elegant composition that conveys a sense of lightness and fluidity of lines in space, simultaneously evoking the classical and futuristic. Upon close inspection, the veins of the onyx reveal its geological formation, unfolding the passage of time. Here, the artisanal ancient craft of forging bronze is achieved by melting domestic recycled copper, emphasizing green, renewable low-carbon emission resources. The Bi disc, an ancient jade used for ritual and ornamental purposes since the Neolithic period, is a recurring motif in Chan’s sculpture from 2019, when she began exploring her personal relationship with Chinese antiquities and non-linear temporality. According to ancient beliefs, the Bi disc symbolizes a connection between the earth and the heavens. Here, light passes through the inner circle of the Bi disc, activating both the exterior and interior spaces. This invokes the flow of energy between the artwork and its surroundings, embodying the artist’s belief that all objects possess a form of life beyond human perception or comprehension. Sculpture dimensions with plinth: 490 x 420 x 200 cm 📸 by Darren Chau @darren_chau Photo courtesy of the artist and Capsule Shanghai @capsuleshanghai #sitespecificsculpture #leeleechan #capsuleshanghai #artbureauadvisory #hongkong

“Nesting Bi” (2025) was possibly the most challenging project for me to date: to make a 4.9 meters tall permanent installation sculpture made from heavy bronze, stone, and glass while maintaining a sense of lightness and movement; to make a meaningful sculpture that found its inspiration in renewable energy and at the same time responds to the spatial realities of the site; and more crucially to make it so that it can fit into a small lift and be placed on the 7th floor 😅 One year of countless discussions, learning, problem solving and traveling to Mainland to oversee the progress (or the lack thereof) ended on the final installation day in July one week before I left for my wedding in Germany. The optimist in me always knew it can be done! Thank you @artbureau.advisory for initiating the project, and @capsuleshanghai for the support. To my team of project manager, structural engineers, stonemasons, bronze foundry, glass fabricators, and studio assistants, I could not have done this without you all. 🎥 Video credit: Darren Chau @darren_chau #sitespecificsculpture #leeleechan #capsuleshanghai #artbureauadvisory #hongkong

Returning from my Instagram hiatus. So many (good) things have happened in the second half of 2025, look forward to catch you all up before the years end ;) First: @jmg.jmg of the Burse de Commerce-Pinault collection curated a selection of my works for the Portfolio section of the Autumn issue of Geste/s magazine, available in-print and online. Thank you Jean-Marie for including me and for the conversation that lead to this exciting feature! #gestesmagazine @yaminabenai #contemporaryart #craft #leeleechan

Leelee Chan Capsule x Klemm’s @asianow OCT 21 - 26, 2025 Booth S14 We are happy to share the installation views of ‘Underland’, Leelee Chan’s solo presentation at Asia NOW, Paris. ‘Underland’ brings together key threads of Chan’s practice—from her Present Relics series to her first bronze sculpture, Wood Wide Web (Unearth). Cast from fragments of shipping pallets, Wood Wide Web (Unearth) evokes the underground networks through which trees communicate, paralleling global trade systems above ground. Its patina and root-like forms bridge the organic and the architectural, stressing the entanglement between ecological and industrial infrastructures. Overall, Chan’s works probe what lies beneath—hidden systems, buried histories, and the links between nature and industry, blending urban debris, natural materials, and ancient references. In this way, they trace material transformation across time, challenging human-centered views of progress. Asia NOW runs between 22 and 26 October. Images: Installation view of Leelee Chan’s ‘Underland’ at Asia NOW, Paris, 2025. Images 2, 4, 8 and 9 by @graysc.de #LeeleeChan #capsuleshanghai #klemmsberlin #asianow25