A figure in profile, head bowed and tilted forward, the skull rendered in pale carved stone — cross-hatched, bleached, mineral. Below the neck, the body darkens: layered paint thickens into black and grey, fibrous strands pulling downward through the torso. At the lower left, a band of amber and deep red cuts across the composition — figures barely legible, fire or painted ground, a world the body stands above without leaving. The split is not metaphorical before it is material. Stone and paint, white and black, stillness and combustion occupy the same silhouette without negotiating. A hand rests at the chest — the one place where the body touches itself, the one gesture that does not dissolve. To the right, pale architectural forms recede into mist, echoing the figure's posture at a distance. The image holds two irreconcilable states of the same form.
