Naked Blast Door Defeats Drawing Champion

Tenzin Cho dropped his drawing charcoal after failing to find the inner vulnerability of a naked blast door.

The three-time champion faced the forty-tonne steel barrier in the final round of the High-Anchor Classic. Organisers had stripped the door of its yellow safety casing and hydraulic grease for the three-hour nude pose, exposing the cold lead-alloy plating beneath.

Cho struggled from the opening bell. While his opponent focused on the door's massive hinge pins, Cho attempted to render the quiet loneliness of the heavy locking mechanism. He spent forty minutes on a single rusty weld.

He wept quietly.

The crowd watched in silence as Cho threw three canvases into the recycling chute. By the final buzzer, his easel held only a grey smudge. Judges awarded the gold carbon-brush to his rival for a simple, flat sketch of the outer seal.

"I could not reach its core," Cho said in the mixed zone, wiping graphite from his fingers. "The metal refused to give me anything but weight. It was a closed performance."