Lynn Chadwick’s final retrospective chapter arrives in Shanghai
Perrotin Shanghai closes the Hypercycle trilogy with Vigilants, a remarkable gathering of works from the late period of the British sculptor's career. The exhibition marks the third and final chapter of an ambitious three year, three continent retrospective curated by Matthieu Poirier.
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Lynn Chadwick’s late works (1978 to 1995) arrive in Shanghai in 2026 as Perrotin brings the final chapter of Hypercycle to its close. Named Vigilants, this exhibition gathers sculptures from the artist’s most resolved period, those decades when ideas first sparked around 1950 reached their fullest and most thoroughly realised form. Chadwick (1914 to 2003) was one of the most significant sculptors of the twentieth century, alongside Alberto Giacometti, Henry Moore, and Louise Bourgeois.
The Hypercycle project is an ambitious three part exhibition spanning three continents and three years, presenting more than 120 of Chadwick’s sculptures. It follows Scalene, which explored his early works (1947 to 1963) and was shown in 2024 in Paris at the Centre des Monuments Nationaux and at Perrotin, and the second chapter, Archetype, displayed in New York from October through December 2025. With Vigilants, the trilogy reaches its culmination.
Chadwick’s angular, faceted sculptures evoke both the constructed and the organic, architectural forms, ship sails, aircraft wings, birds, bats, skeletons, and exoskeletons. In these final works, his vocabulary becomes ever more refined. The photographer in the first image documents the artist at his long worktable, surrounded by scale models of the forms he was developing; behind him, abstract metal figures emerge from sketches and maquettes. In the second image, two bronze figures crowned with pale wooden geometries sit vigil together, their patinated forms and tensile postures encapsulating the economy and power of his late vision. Curated by Matthieu Poirier, presented by Perrotin, Vigilants opens on 9 November at 4pm.
Imagery courtesy of Perrotin (@perrotin).
