2 MAY until 6 JUN 2025

Spiral Diaries marks Leelee Chan’s second solo exhibition at Galerie Klemm’s, presenting a new body of sculptures that continue her exploration of materiality, temporality, and transformation. Chan fuses material and objects into dynamic constellations that span geological, cultural, and industrial timeframes, forging a practice in which ancient relics, contemporary manufacturing processes, and natural phenomena converge into autonomous sculptural entities. Her sculptures function both as self-contained forms and as part of a continuous stream of thought, articulating a material intelligence that weaves through her experience and early work, evolving into her current and future practice.

Throughout Spiral Diaries, the spiral emerges as a visual, conceptual, and symbolic leitmotif. Evoking growth, recursion, and the nonlinearity of time, spirals reference the cochlea, whelk egg cases, and mollusk shells, as well as the invisible structures underlying movement and communication—patterning that, like a diary, encodes survival strategies across generations. This form signals a broader metaphor in Chan’s work: material and conceptual transformation through layered accumulation rather than fixed endpoints.

In Shapeshifter (Mitridae) (2025), a hand-carved onyx shell encases a 3D-printed stainless steel spiral structure—a configuration that evokes the so-called “impossible object,” a multipart form where an internal structure exists freely within an outer shell without any physical connection between them. While 3D printing made the fabrication of such objects possible in the 1980s, historically, ‘impossible objects’ had already been realized in the intricate hand-carved ivory Chinese puzzle balls centuries ago. In Chan’s sculpture, the hollowed stone envelops a delicate metallic spiral, reminiscent of the predatory sea snails of the Mitridae family. The spiral, a form of growth and movement, also evokes industrial tools and their destructive power. By embedding an industrial core into hand-shaped stone, Chan destabilizes ideas of purity, tradition, and craftsmanship, suggesting a continuum between geological time and emerging technologies. Shapeshifter (Mitridae) embodies the ambiguity at the heart of her practice: works that exist between the natural and artificial, inhabiting the fluid space where the two converge.

Across the space, Chan repositions found and industrially manufactured materials—removed from the cycles of consumption and obsolescence—to recast them as protagonists. Peculiar Pyramid (2024) brings together fragments of a Tang dynasty (618–907 AD) burial horse and an earth spirit figure within a vertically stratified structure composed of found prefabricated aluminium components and hand-worked epoxy clay. Resting on a mirrored base, the sculpture challenges notions of monumentality and permanence, juxtaposing industrial precision with the subtleties of human craftsmanship. This contrast exposes the friction between labor systems and the obscured origins of goods, while celebrating imperfection and material expressiveness. Her sculptures are living formations, animated by their histories, activating fracture and absence as sculptural forces. The mirrored base destabilizes perspective, inviting dynamic interaction with the work. Rather than idealizing the past or fetishizing technological novelty, Chan allows each material’s history and future potential to remain open—proposing sculptures as paradigms of thinking processes, not answers.

Another dialogue between material vitality and spatial perception unfolds in Wood Wide Web (2025), where a cast of manipulated, found plastic shipping pallet fragments evokes subterranean mycorrhizal networks—hidden systems through which trees communicate and sustain one another. The use of pallets, a recurring motif in Chan’s work since 2018 (also seen in Moth, 2023), draws a parallel between the underground network of tree roots and the above-ground system of pallets, which function as temporary, mobile surfaces within the context of a circular, global economy. The fragile, root-like forms render visible what typically remains unseen, while the chemical process of lost-wax casting process introduces an element of material autonomy. The contrast between human ideas of growth—focused on efficiency, labor removal, and human-centric progression—and the intelligence of other life forms, which grow through communication and the sharing of resources, is striking. The patina, reminiscent of ancient Chinese ritual bronzes buried for the afterlife and now unearthed, adds a layer of historical depth. Hovering at an elevated height, Wood Wide Web blurs the distinctions between architecture and organic growth, further activating the surrounding space and extending the viewer’s perception between interior and exterior realms.

In Moth (2023), Chan reconfigures found shipping pallets and petrified wood into fragile, wing-like structures, subtly evoking the Chinese belief that moths are spirits of deceased loved ones visiting. The work compresses layered temporalities—human time, embodied in the sculpting of plastic and clay; deep time, reflected in the petrified wood; and the ephemeral life cycle of the moth—blurring boundaries between synthetic debris and organic memory.

Material sensibilities continue in Maker’s Egg Cases (2025). Dense clusters of zinc-plated hex nuts, tinted tempered glass, and enlarged plastic egg case casted in bath stone powder, suggest both industrial assembly and marine environments. The surfaces of the nuts, topped with blue glass discs, catch the changing daylight, refracting it like ocean membranes and shimmering with the iridescence of shells or the gleaming, toxic sheen of spilled gasoline. Chan fuses industrial repetition with organic metamorphosis, highlighting humanity’s drive to create protective, efficient designs—cases that enable mobility and stackability, mirroring the circular economy. While humans shape environments to serve their needs, mollusks and other sea creatures must continually adapt to protect themselves from their changing realities.

In a reality shaped by reductive narratives and binary thinking, Spiral Diaries offers a vocabulary for inhabiting complexity. Her works resist fixed meanings, inviting movement, reflection, and the slow unfolding of new ways of seeing—nurturing a renewed sensitivity to ambiguity. With her finely tuned sensibility, Chan constructs sculptures that are as poetic as they are investigative. Amid ecological precarity and cultural amnesia, Spiral Diaries unfolds a material vocabulary for remembering, sensing,  and imagining otherwise.