Artist: Gregory Kalliche
Exhibition title: Ferula!
Venue: Freddy, New York, US
Date: August 13 – September 10, 2022
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Freddy
I like how the Transcendentalists of the mid-19th century had such disdain towards the Spiritualist movement (I’m referring to the séances, mediums and table -rapping Spiritualists). The purpose of Herman Melville’s “The Apple-Tree Table” is to make a long-winded joke at the expense of the movement. In the story, a family believes a table they’ve found in the attic to be possessed by spirits only to eventually discover that it’s infested with bugs. As an insult the story is alright, but what’s more of interest to me is that the sensory effect driving the table’s ‘possession’ has this ultimately banal and foul undertone.
I find it contradictory that there is such an extensive visual language for the spirit realm. One that has grown to be understood by way of visual effects that use familiar phenomena to be right at the edge of visibility, just short of thin air; in practice most frequently via smoke, light, vapor, transparency and other natural components. For this show I am folding together this line of thinking with my ongoing use of electricity as a point of focus and material for the works. Electricity is also prone to embellishment with the popular visual language used to depict it: a vast and almighty energy in contrast to how it’s consolidated into an inconspicuous, everyday utility. Additionally, the show is taking place within a church; once a site that held ceremonies as an effort to connect with or channel from divine realms — a conduit (it’s not lost on me that the gallery borrows its name from a character who is known to infiltrate the physical world from Hell). I think this new work comes from a consideration of how realm crossing can be depicted or understood: or Promethean-like exchanges between heaven and earth and how that all has come to look or could look; the audio/visual language associated with other-worldliness and some of the audacity and difficulty associated with that.
For Ferula! I’m presenting a new holographic video along with some prints that use vintage puzzles as a grounds for image layering, all situated in the attic and bell tower of the church. Hope you can make it up to see.
-Gregory
Gregory Kalliche, Ferula!, 2022, exhibition view, Freddy, New York
Gregory Kalliche, Ferula!, 2022, exhibition view, Freddy, New York
Gregory Kalliche, “YOU SAW”, 2022, 1979 Springbok puzzle, three-layer UV print on transparent acrylic, PVC panel, aluminum puzzle frame, 24 x 18 inches
Gregory Kalliche, Ferula!, 2022, exhibition view, Freddy, New York
Gregory Kalliche, “Soooo empyrean!”, 2022, 1979 Springbok puzzle, three-layer UV print on transparent acrylic, PVC panel, aluminum puzzle frame, 24 x 18 inches
Gregory Kalliche, Ferula!, 2022, exhibition view, Freddy, New York
Gregory Kalliche, “Slow to disappear (bell tower)”, 2022, 4K color video with sound, holographic display 3:41 minutes
Gregory Kalliche, “Slow to disappear (bell tower)”, 2022, 4K color video with sound, holographic display 3:41 minutes
Gregory Kalliche, “Slow to disappear (bell tower)”, 2022, 4K color video with sound, holographic display 3:41 minutes
Gregory Kalliche, “Slow to disappear (bell tower)”, 2022, 4K color video with sound, holographic display 3:41 minutes
Gregory Kalliche, “Slow to disappear (bell tower)”, 2022, 4K color video with sound, holographic display 3:41 minutes
Gregory Kalliche, “It’s Haunted”, 2022, 1988 GAPF puzzle, three-layer UV print on transparent acrylic, PVC panel, aluminum puzzle frame, 24 x 18 inches
Gregory Kalliche, “It’s Haunted”, 2022, 1988 GAPF puzzle, three-layer UV print on transparent acrylic, PVC panel, aluminum puzzle frame, 24 x 18 inches
Gregory Kalliche, Ferula!, 2022, exhibition view, Freddy, New York
Gregory Kalliche, “Ferula!”, 2022, 1979 Springbok puzzle, three-layer UV print on transparent acrylic, PVC panel, aluminum puzzle frame, 24 x 18 inches