This Saturday, April 12, 3pm - 5pm, the gallery is holding a Closing Reception for “A Whole Night” by Xiao He, with casual Artist-led Walkthroughs of the exhibition throughout the timeframe of the reception. _ _ epigraph Now I see what’s so precious isn’t the painting, isn’t the object, isn’t the thing….  What’s so precious is the chance, the melancholic falling (into place): the timing. Vertigo. What’s so precious is that I see myself looking. That I’m exchanged. Or that I see myself looking as someone else, that my whole expanse runs along my gaze until it becomes somewhere else. (That there’s footage of me caught in the act.) What’s so precious is that I’m drawn to the light (so I can see). Suddenly but slowly the source of my life and the source of my longing align. An eclipse: because the light is too bright so it becomes a blindspot, swapping me for a moth: I think it’s the sun. (You think I’m the sun.) If there’s anything precious it’s all the distance of the double life that divides me from myself, so I only ever find what I want in pieces. So I only find needles made of haystacks. So I see myself strewn but only all the forgetting can keep all of the parts together. So I only know you because memory holds us far enough apart. Because at night everything that’s missing between us is what keeps us so close. Or as far away as a shadow from its source; where a body beams a hole where day becomes night against me. Tripling the two: | / Or, in the morning: when forgetting starts the memory of a dream. “All night I make night in me.” All night you make day in me. (Or, if I didn’t lack you I wouldn’t be nearby.) Else, observations from a night when the moon tells us the sun is somewhere else, when it shows me its face by turning away. Only the yellow blare of a lupine melancholia can tell the difference between who’s looking. A signal. Otherwise there’s only clockwork keeping count. There’s only turning toward and away. But the turning keeps going one direction, clockwise. (There’s a projected plane, a jutting-out.) There’s looking, seeing, watching, gazing(, scanning), longing. 0. Or, during the day the sun is a hole: it’s too bright to be seen, to be looked-at directly. I turn away from the sun. All the light comes from nothing. (Zero.) Or, during the night all the suns are punctured: it’s too dark to see anything, except what’s missing. The hole that was the sun surrounds me and I know that because it’s shadow lets me look over its boundary. Because I’m plucked from its center. I turn toward the night. (I turn toward where the light use to be.) All the light comes from nothing. (Infinity.) All this turning in the night. All this turning is the night. Or, “[…] All night I hear the voice of someone seeking me out. All night you abandon me slowly like the water that sobs slowly falling. All night I write luminous messages, messages of rain, all night someone checks for me and I check for someone.          The noise of steps in the circle near this choleric light birthed from my insomnia. Steps of someone who no longer writhes, who no longer writes. All night someone holds back, then crosses the circle of bitter light.          All night I drown in your eyes become my eyes. All night I prod myself on toward that squatter in the circle of my silence. All night I see something lurch toward my looking, something humid, contrived of silence launching the sound of someone sobbing. […]”* After all, there’s night if any two distinct points lie on exactly one line. If, any two distinct lines meet in exactly one point. If, there exist four points, no three of which are collinear. Or, a parallel projection where the object is rotated along one or more of its axes relative to the plane of projection, so that multiple sides are visible, and the scale along each axis is preserved (though it may differ between axes). __________________________________________________ | Xiao He (b. 1998, Chengdu, China) is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in San Francisco. Xiao holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has completed an online drawing development year at the Royal Drawing School London. Her recent exhibitions include 2024 Reisig and Taylor Contemporary in Los Angeles, 2023 4C Gallery in Los Angeles, 2022 Art Capital in Paris, France, Upstream Gallery in New York, USA, Huacui Contemporary Art Center in Shanghai, China, and Zhou B Art Center in Chicago, USA. Her artist interviews have been featured in Al-Tiba9 Art Magazine, ShoutoutLA and VoyageLA, along with residencies awarded at the Cubberley Artist Studio Program in 2024 and the Kala Art Institute in 2023. Her mixed-media artists' book, "A Collection of Random Thoughts," is part of the permanent collection of the Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection in Chicago. Works by Xiao have been shown in previous group exhibitions and fair presentations with the gallery, including: Other Days (2024), There’s no telling time (2024), To Market, to market (San Francisco Art Fair 2024), and Good Grounds, Drowned Meadows (Hamptons Fine Art Fair 2024). ____________________________________________________ Alejandra Pizarnik, "[All night I hear the noise of  water sobbing.]" from The Galloping Hour: French Poems (2018). Translated by Patricio Ferrari and Forrest Gander. _______________________________________________________ Image: Xiao He. "A Whole Night" Installation View. [Photo by ofstudio.]