Gregory Kalliche
LED Drawings
Jouleys
March 2023

spears gnd, 2023
LEDs, aluminum channel, power supply, custom electronics, accompanying hardware

DEV-PULLEY1 as DC +
PEN-PULLEY1 as DC –
18-8 stainless steel, galvanized steel, lead clamps, 3mm 12v standby LED (red), 12v DC lead-acid automotive battery
2023

Gregory Kalliche’s practice makes manifest the operations of infrastructural systems that are often unobserved or invisible. In particular, he is interested in the role of electricity, both as an immaterial force that powers virtually every aspect of daily existence, and as a potent space of metaphor-making. In his computer animations, installations, and sculptural work, Kalliche slyly entangles imagery drawn from stage magic, the supernatural, and pop culture with the operations of real-world systems we continually rely upon but often don’t fully consider or understand.

During his residency at lower_cavity, Kalliche produced two bodies of work. The first, LED Drawings, continues a series started in 2017. These light-based works function as drawings on several levels: first, as a sketch or formal composition stripped down to a layered arrangement of line segments; second, as a way of thinking about the relationship between drawing and the flows of electricity through a circuit, which are rendered visible by the strips of LED diodes comprising the works. For Kalliche, the sequencing of wiring of these works is as important as their visual composition, with both aspects of the works continually informing each other visually and conceptually.

The two new drawings were installed in one of lower_cavity’s various annex spaces, a low, brick-floored basement lined with rows of old wood shelving. An artist who has often situated work outside of traditional exhibition settings, Kalliche decided to use the shelving as a support for the drawings, which appear to hover across its surface. Luminous and otherworldly, the drawings evoke the visual syntax of traditional landscapes as well as physics diagrams. The output of the LEDS has been turned down low enough that the three individual diodes comprising each point of light are just perceivable to the eye, producing an impression of optical vibration that subtly highlights the active flow of current through the works.

In a separate area, a cavernous, high-vaulted industrial chamber adjacent to the main lower_cavity project space, Kalliche has installed three sculptures, the first in a new series developed during his residency entitled Jouleys. The works are composed of pairs of 3D-printed stainless-steel figures perched atop standard lead-acid car batteries. The paired figures—mannikin-like beings with features that evoke both cartoon characters and creatures from folklore—hold a single illuminated LED diode aloft between them like a beacon. These metal characters, both familiar-seeming and mysterious, play the leads in a performance that records an unfolding entropic process. Because they are fully conductive, the sculptures act as the positive and negative terminals in a circuit; when connected to the battery and to each other, they slowly drain it of power. So long as the LED remains lit, the battery still retains enough of its charge to supply adequate voltage to the circuit. Eventually however the battery will be fully drained, and the LED will go dark.

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Gregory Kalliche is an artist living in Queens, New York and working in Brooklyn. Recent solo and group exhibitions include KAJE, New York; CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, France; Winter Street Gallery, Massachusetts;  Freddy, New York; Helena Anrather, New York; Interstate Projects, New York; Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art, Massachusetts; and New Museum, New York. Additional projects include 57 Cell, a publication that the artist produces featuring 3D-modeled exhibitions in simulated environments, and Pretty Days, an offsite curatorial project he co-runs with artist Harry Gould Harvey IV.