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.
Very good.
Minor corner bumping, primarily to slipcase.
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.
