Fion Tse – Medium

Aug 9

Wilco’s Ode to Joy — Lawrence Azerrad

Wilco’s Ode to Joy — Lawrence Azerrad An airplane window, an eyeglass lens, a blind spot of light, or simply — the shape of nothingness. Lawrence Azerrad’s art piece for the band Wilco’s album Ode to Joy draws a contemporary blank, tracing the shape of an oblong absence with a…

Art

2 min read

Aug 3

Pain

Recently I’ve been thinking about pain, and the ways we conceptualize it. Earlier this evening, I had ripped a Salonpas pain patch from my forehead. …

1 min read

Jun 29

‘The Immortalists’ by Chloe Benjamin

Today I took a walk downtown and spent over an hour reading The Immortalists at the Toronto Public Library. The Immortalists ’s a beautiful book with Night Circus-type paper cutout illustrations on the cover that immediately caught my eye. The writing is absolutely gorgeous, too — there’s a part about…

Books

3 min read

Jun 1

Origami

Origami Taking 7 pieces of paper doesn’t feel like much, but folding 7 creatures out of 7 pieces of paper makes the paper feel so much more, like two hands are not enough to gently cradle a jumble of origami animals and flowers to transport them through the doorway, up the stairs, through the hallway to maneuver the door handle open and flutter them onto the plush carpet.

1 min read

Origami

Taking 7 pieces of paper doesn’t feel like much, but folding 7 creatures out of 7 pieces of paper makes the paper feel so much more, like two hands are not enough to gently cradle a jumble of origami animals and flowers to transport them through the doorway, up the stairs, through the hallway to maneuver the door handle open and flutter them onto the plush carpet.

Apr 16

The Reg

For the first time, I see it from a birds-eye view: rectangular blocks, slatted open like a KitKat, partitioned by a thin metal ladder, sliced thinly by lines of high-dwelling algae and moss. Next to it a four-pronged, Neo-Gothic cuboid emerges, out of place. The Reg is where I spend…

Art

2 min read

Apr 16

This House is Mine, Bob Thompson

Looking at art and looking around art are two completely different experiences. I had thought that working as a gallery attendant would afford me more time to look at art, to think of the world as centered around art, to pin my fulcrum down on the lofty goal of Looking…

Art

2 min read

Feb 25

Immortals of the Peach Blossom Grove, wenwen🥕

This piece comes from the Twitter account of an artist I admire. They’ve moved accounts several times, sometimes without announcing it, but their art style is so distinct that whenever it pops up on my timeline, I know without a doubt — it’s them. Following the same artist for years…

Art

2 min read

Immortals of the Peach Blossom Grove, wenwen🥕

Feb 6

Untitled [Seated Female Figure], Max Kahn

I pull a chair to the middle of the room and sit. I’m not quite in the right spot yet. I drag the chair further back, sitting and glancing and standing in order to find a spot where my view of it isn’t striped with reflections of fluorescent light-tubes. My…

Art

2 min read

Untitled [Seated Female Figure], Max Kahn

Feb 6

Ordovician Period, Sugimoto Hiroshi

Wednesday’s Smart Museum visit was the first time I had experienced looking at a gelatin silver print up close, without a sharp panel of glass catching the light. I was pleasantly surprised by how soft the piece felt, despite all the darknesses and angled lines: like I could reach a…

Essay

1 min read

Feb 6

On Frames

Consider: A picture is a frame, too. It tells us where to stop looking, what to consider “art” and what not. What is a frame? Is the space in between the two images a frame? …

Essay

4 min read