The Knockdown Center is pleased to present Second Sun, a solo exhibition of new works from New York-based artist Gregory Kalliche. In the exhibition, works take their origin from a critical interest in how the sun has been synthesized and put into practical use. Throughout the exhibition, Kalliche treats this synthesis as subject matter, as well as raw material, tool, process and effect.
As part of the Ruin Series, the exhibition is situated in both a roofless, exterior section and a subterranean chamber of a century-old, stone building. The exterior section features a series of ultraviolet prints that use 3D modeling as a starting point to construct and reimagine works where materials and images are nuanced into figurative forms. These 3D models, though emulating sculptural space, only appear in the exhibition as rendered images, projected and printed onto flat surfaces. Installed in the interior space is a projected video along with a series of loosely figurative works titled Understudies. Here, night fishing ultraviolet LEDs become rigid lines, divided and pulled out into space like points moved around in Cartesian coordinates.
Second Sun explores the practicality and absurdity of artifice through video, prints, and sculptural works. With both excitement and apprehension towards the synthetic, Kalliche’s work indulges in complications of representation with a playful and at times fleeting optimism.
In the fully round view of the staring fruit is a landscape of the most superintended light. In the direct exposure of these lights are objects most satisfied when imagined as their descriptors and not by them. As a hard boiled egg on sugar lump. Bird beak. 360° almond eyes. Heavy balloon, fluent in gravity stuck above a cubic slab. Alien &/or snake chignon. These descriptors, secondaries and derivatives take the driver’s seat. They go. The shade is where twisting appendages try to move any recognizable shape onto the supportive hands that act as the best lit seats. Here’s where the light bathing takes place, takes on materiality and does its best work. After a short bit of time, the husks will reach their pinnacle. Their pores spill fragrant oils. Wrinkles on the skin’s surface coalesce into the most excited smiles. At an aggregated point, everything pops off and falls to the ground, which is also well lit and tends to wear its own vibrant grin.
