Brook Hsu, Maggie (2021). Ink on canvas, 132 x 140 cm. Courtesy the artist and Edouard Malingue Gallery.
At Frieze London, Edouard Malingue Gallery are showing works by rising-star painter Brook Hsu (b. 1987, USA).
Hsu has recently been the subject of many international solo exhibitions. Among them are Fictions, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler Gallery, Berlin (2021); Conspiracy theory, Et al., San Francisco (2019); pond-love, Bortolami Gallery, New York (2019); and Fruiting Body, Bahamas Biennale, Detroit (2018).
Edouard Malingue Gallery's presentation includes a recent series of portraits that draw influence from film directors such as Stanley Kwan, Takeshi Kitano, and Wong Kar-wai.
Maggie (2021) depicts actor Maggie Cheung, known for her role in serendipitous films such as In the Mood for Love. Interested in melancholy and the human figure, Hsu has described such paintings as 'surrogates in pure form'.
Writing in Cultured Magazine, Elizabeth Karl-Evans also noted how 'Hsu looks to dilate viewers' perspectives by employing mythic and spiritual symbolism wavering between abstraction and figuration. Her work is a profusion of oil painting, texts, sculpture and carpet pieces that present contemporary narratives of love, pain, humour and connectedness.'
