CHRYSOPOEIA – solo exhibition by Kaliyah Kalacheva

Little Bird Place Gallery is pleased to invite you to:

CHRYSOPOEIA
solo exhibition by Kaliyah Kalacheva
Curator: Theodossiy Gueorguiev
14.10—09.11.2025

Opening reception, vernissage: 14.10 (Tuesday) 18:00 – 21:00
Meet the Artist & Curator: 30.10 (Thursday), from 18:00

See all works from the exhibition HERE!

CHRYSOPOEIA

(lit. ‘gold-making’ from χρυσός ‘gold’ and ποιεῖν ‘make, create’ –
the alchemical transmutation of a base metal into gold)

Even to the uninitiated novice, the occult search for the philosopher’s stone, the eternal quest for the secret formula for turning mercury into gold, and the insatiable thirst for the elixir of life spark a particular form of curiosity. And rightfully so. From Hermes Trismegistus and his Emerald Table through Plato to Isaac Newton, adepts of this art have followed the fundamental principle that “as being is to becoming, so truth is to belief.” (1)

The first known use of the term “chrysopoeia” comes from a medieval copy of an ancient Greek original probably dating from the first centuries AD. The opus is kept in the Biblioteca Marciana and is decorated with an ouroboros, which includes the Hermetic concept “ἕν τὸ πᾶν,”(2) while the text is attributed to Cleopatra. Not, however, that famed mistress of Mark Antony’s, the last Egyptian queen of the fellow Ptolemaic dynasty, but a different one, in whom “is concealed a strange and terrible mystery” and who was believed to have been one of the few ancient sorceresses who possessed the secret of the philosopher’s stone. Prima materia, the four elements deriving from it, and their interconvertibility are present in both the physical and the spiritual realm. The concept gained popularity in Byzantium thanks to the eponymous treatise by Stephanos of Alexandria and, through the golden enthusiasm of Kaliyah Kalacheva and a humble contribution on my part, reaches down to her last solo exhibition.

And nothing random happens at random. Precisely when contemporary science, which has since the Enlightenment rejected such nonsense, marks achievements such as the electromagnetic dissociation of lead into gold and the solidification of light, it is then that Kaliyah finally feels ready and, after long-term investments in working with different types of metal foil, exceeds her own achievements and introduces in her work the practice of applying real 23-carat gold leaf onto the canvas. Her technique evolves and becomes alchemical per se, driven by the compulsion to reveal just as much as to conceal.

(1) Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9, “Timaeus” 29c, transl. by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA,
Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925.
(2) “The all is one”.

— Theodossiy Gueorguiev, 5 October 2025, Balchik

*Made possible with the financial support of the National Culture Fund.