Brook Hsu opens December 15 in Rome with 24 paintings that form a green line around the interior of Sant’Andrea de Scaphis. Brook Hsu (b. 1987) deploys and weaves the autobiographical and the mythopoetic into paintings using an array of materials, including ink, oil paint, industrial carpets, and off-cuts of ready-made lumber. The sources for Hsu’s imagery come from her own observations, sometimes arising from art history, film and literature. Working across painting, drawing, sculpture and writing, her works aim to question how we define representation today, producing abstract and figurative works that employ a host of signs and motifs, recounting stories of love, pain and humour. Hsu says of her practice, “I seek to understand what we value in life by asking how we value the world.” Taiwanese American artist Brook Hsu grew up in Oklahoma, received her BFA from the Kansas City Art Instiute in 2010 and her MFA from Yale University in 2016. Recent solo exhibitions include: Kiang Malingue, Hong Kong (2022); Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin (2021); Manual Arts, Los Angeles, USA (2021); Bortolami Gallery, New York (2019). Group exhibitions include: Reference Material, Adler Beatty, New York (2022), The Practice of Everyday Life, Derosia Gallery, New York (2022), Sweet Days of Discipline, Hannah Ho"man, Los Angeles (2022); kaufmann repetto, New York and Milan (2021), More, More, More (curated by Passing Fancy), TANK, Shanghai (2020); LIFE STILL, CLEARING, New York (2020); The End of Expressionism, Jan Kaps, Cologne (2020); Polly, Insect Gallery, Los Angeles (2019-2020); A Cloth Over a Birdcage, Château Shatto, Los Angeles (2019); Finders’ Lodge, in lieu, Los Angeles (2019); and Let Me Consider It from Here, The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2018-2019). Her work is part of the collections of X Museum, Beijing; Long Museum, Shanghai.
‘. . . classical stories about lovers . . . No kisses, nothing of that sort . . . It was all so pure! That’s why they are famous . . . feelings that cannot be given form are never forgotten . . . ’
He raises his head and sniffs the air like an animal. ‘Here it’s like in Russia. I don’t know why . . . You know, there is a joke.’ He suddenly switches into Russian. ‘One bloke’s pulling another bloke out of a huge, deep pool of shit . . . He was almost choking . . . But he pulls him out, risking his own life . . . So there they are, lying on the edge of the revolting bog, and panting . . . they’re both worn out . . . finally the one who was pulled out asks with a funny look: “What was that for? Why did you pull me out?”
“What do you mean why? I saved you,” says the rescuer, puzzled.
“You idiot,” the rescued man says, terribly offended. “You idiot, that’s my home.”
Gorchakov laughs out loud with glee. ‘But of course you don’t understand a thing . . .’ and he continues in his wretched Italian: ‘What’s your name?’
‘Marco,’ answers the boy, uncertainly.
‘That’s the stuff”. Are you happy? . . .’
‘What with?’
‘Everything . . . life?’
‘Life . . . life . . . of course I am.’
Gorchakov lies on the ground and gazes up at the cold and clear autumn sky. Nearby, in the fire, glows his forgotten book of poetry . . .
– ANDREI TARKOVSKY Nostalgia, 1983
