Triptych

Gold runs down the left face. Diamonds run down the right. The middle face, ceramic, eyeless, cries in the material it was made from — not ornament but substrate, not wealth but the structure that makes wealth legible. When it smiles it does so without eyes, which means the smile has no object, which means it is not a smile in the social sense but a formal rearrangement of the lower face in the direction of openness. The outer faces watch. They have been assigned their materials. They have no choice but to perform them.