Brook Hsu.
Norwegian Wood.
New York: American Art Catalogues, 2021.
Softcover with hand stamped slipcase.
76 pages (each, Book I & II).
28 pages (insert).
11 × 9 1/4 inches, landscape.
Norwegian Wood takes its form and title from the first edition English printing of Haruki Murakami’s 1987 novel. Assembled in three parts, Book I and II, designed as companions to one another, are reflections of themselves that survey a selection of 94 works from 2013 to 2021. The third, a booklet that houses a commissioned essay by Amanda Schmitt, a poem from Alex Jen, and a new text by Hsu.
The three volumes arrive entombed in a stamped slipcase, and are encouraged to be exhumed together, and explored concurrently. Norwegian Wood serves not only as an expansive reference of Hsu’s practice (thus far) as a painter, but as an embodiment of past and future; love and loss, a beginning and an end.
