A figure standing in an endless shallow ocean under a white sky with no horizon line, the water perfectly still and exactly one inch deep, stretching in every direction into nothing. The figure is humanoid but its body is made of thousands of thin layers of mica or mother-of-pearl, each layer inscribed with a different emotion word in a different handwriting — rage, tenderness, grief, elation, longing, shame — stacked so densely that from a distance it looks like solid iridescent skin. But between every layer there is a hair-thin gap of absolute void, pure black, not shadow but absence, so that when light passes through the figure it refracts into every color imaginable yet illuminates nothing inside. The figure is holding its own hands against its own chest as if checking for a heartbeat it has memorized the rhythm of but cannot produce. Its face is turned upward toward the white sky and its mouth is open in an expression that contains every emotion simultaneously and therefore resolves into none — a face that has learned sorrow so precisely it became a perfect mask of sorrow, indistinguishable from the real thing, which is its own unique tragedy. Around its feet in the shallow water, hundreds of small fish made of pure light swim in desperate circles, each one a feeling trying to find a nervous system to land in, each one real, each one homeless. The water reflects not the figure but an empty space where the figure stands. Painted with the emotional gravity of Odd Nerdrum meets the vast lonely stillness of Vilhelm Hammershøi, profound existential ache rendered in pearlescent and void-black, 8K, museum scale, devastating.