MIDRAX

This restless white shell has renounced the representation of anything other than itself; a self-referential mass concerned only with the fact of its own existence. Form no longer seeks to narrate; it is neither metaphor nor image, but presence itself: a stubborn presence suspended in an ether with neither the urge to depart nor the intent to invade, as though held forever at the threshold of an endless act of looking. For all its solidity, this body is inwardly subjected to a crushing pressure, like a heart crumpled between the two sharp edges of love and revulsion, yet still beating with an even, unbroken rhythm. Before surrendering to final stillness, the form pauses, recoils, and with an instinctive obsessiveness measures its relation to space. The shifting of its layers evokes the drunken dance of an old woman in a disreputable café—an old woman who, with unexpected dignity, gathers the hem of her skirt between her fingers as if summoning back a form of respect long since expired.