Andrew Reed Gallery is excited to present Xi Liu's solo exhibition, The house of day, the house of night. This is the Beijing-based artist's first solo exhibition with the gallery and will be on view through October 3rd.

The conceptual starting point for this body of work draws from Dom dzienny, dom nocny (House of Day, House of Night) by Polish‐born author Olga Tokarczuk. Within the novel, the house is more than a mere building or dwelling vessel. It evolves into a composite space that links reality and memory, individual life and historical time, everyday experience and the subconscious.

Through her spatial perception and artistic practice, Xi holds true a core conviction: human life is finite and fleeting, whereas objects and spatial carriers possess permanence that transcends individual existence. They continuously absorb successive generations’ habitation, migration, vanishing and forgetting, acting as enduring vessels for life trajectories and temporal traces. Space is therefore not a neutral, empty container. Instead, it functions as a temporal material medium: it preserves events that once unfolded within it and bears the living imprints of those who have departed. The meaning of space derives not solely from its present physical form, but from the cumulative layering of lived activities, relationships, memories, and emotions accumulated over time.

Accordingly, Xi interprets “the house” as a structure with dual ontological dimensions. The “house of day” first corresponds to experiential, phenomenal space. It is the tangible site where bodies inhabit, labor, rest, pass through, observe and act. Walls, windows, doors, lighting, and furniture constitute a perceptible, measurable physical order. Subject to three‐dimensional geometry, it embodies an individual’s most immediate encounter with the real world. By contrast, the “house of night” points to an ontological dimension that cannot be fully visualized. It is not merely a space of darkness, but a mental field activated by memory, dreams, the subconscious, emotions and past experiences.

This understanding compels Xi to reconsider conventional conceptions of space. In her practice, time is not an external variable appended onto space; it is intrinsic to space’s very mode of being. Space accrues meaning over time: one single wall, window, or lamp may acquire renewed significance across different life phases, events, and subjective experiences. While its physical form remains relatively stable, the existential content of the same space keeps transforming. Xi’s conception of “space” approximates a composite field of time‐being. The past does not simply terminate as elapsed time; instead, it lingers as residual presence within the present. Consequently, present‐day space contains elements that do not strictly belong to “the now”. Past, present, and the yet‐to‐happen future fold into one another within a single spatial experience, giving rise to a non‐linear temporal structure. This non‐linear conception of time forms a foundational premise for her painting practice.

In Holding in / Looking out, Xi juxtaposes two regimes of seeing: the wall obstructs vision, while the window structures it. The window seemingly offers freedom, yet it simultaneously delimits your field of view. The wall appears to conceal, but it can also conjure another world through patterns, color, and memory. Meanwhile, By the windowsill, installed alongside, points to the predicament of existence and the paradox of intimacy and alienation coexisting within close‐knit relationships. This work is inspired by the film Paris, Texas. One‐way glass divides a single space, creating a confrontation between seeing and being seen. Figures confide across the barrier; images only overlap illusorily upon the glass, never enabling genuine mutual gaze. This bespeaks the insurmountable distance between human beings. Xi incorporates motifs such as trains, rotating lights, and fences to interpret the existential condition where souls face one another yet can never embrace.

Hence, the “house of day” and the “house of night” are not two discrete spaces, but two interdependent modes of being within one and the same space. “Day / night” here is more than a temporal distinction; it establishes a fundamental binary framework. Seemingly antithetical categories – the visible and the invisible, reality and memory, matter and spirit, presence and absence, the present and the past – are relocated within this unified spatial field. Rather than seeking to fix the boundary between the two, Xi attends to how they permeate and reciprocally generate one another, rendering space a site where opposing conditions perpetually coexist.

Xi Liu: The house of day, the house of night

Xi Liu:
The house of day, the house of night