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R.S.V.P. was Susan Norrie's first exhibition in New York and was held in late 1990. Each of the seven works included in the show has the same format. On the left-hand side is a crafted, wood-veneer 'cabinet' (really a shallow box, four inches deep, with a shelf-cavity built in at the centre), the same height and width as the adjoining, unframed, painted surface. The polisher veneers are themselves rich surfaces, capable of sustaining illusions of depth. Propped against the back of each of the shelves is a small painting, either a non figurative surface, the pale head of a boy with his mouth held in a neat '0', or, in one instance, an exquisitely painted egg, narrow end down, which you are almost tempted to catch. The large painted panels are layered, complexly textured, monochromatic, non-figurative surfaces, in a number of which are buried (or from which emerge) the letters or parts of the letters, R.S.V.P., so that they are readable in some places, not in others.
These are beautiful and curious surfaces, for the same layering of paint might have been used to produce depth, rather than Norrie's flourishing, Baroquely artificial flatness. Given the lettering – which should be referred to as a sign, because it is understood formally, (flatly, perhaps), without the necessity of translation – the viewer is prompted to ask what kind of invitation has been issued. But the relationships between the cabinets, the images and surfaces contained within them, and the large paintings, is recalcitrant.
Reference may be made here to the work of the German painter, Gerhard Richter, whose investigations may be alluded to in areas of Norrie's surfaces (for instance, where paint appears