Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - A Wound Kept in Rows

A single pomegranate lies broken in two on bare stone, its cut faces turned toward the light as though offering themselves to be read. A few loose seeds have been set out beside it in a short, deliberate row. The rest of the slab is left empty. Around this small, exact scene there is nothing but the deep red of the mirror itself, so that the fruit and its few counted seeds become the only fact in the frame. The work is not painted or printed. It is scratched into the surface of deep red coloured mirror glass, the image forming through removal rather than addition. Red is not a background choice here, it is the colour of the fruit's own interior, of the wound and the seed alike, and it carries that weight through the whole piece. The scratches are always present, with or without direct light. What changes is only the depth: under a stronger light the contrast deepens and the cut surfaces seem to open further. Light does not create this image. It sharpens it. Between and around the marks, the coloured mirror glass holds its own reflection, the room, its light, and the person standing in front of it. The viewer is drawn into the same bare, red field as the broken fruit, standing beside it the way the seeds stand beside the empty half of the stone. Seen from across a room, the piece reads as one quiet, monumental gesture, a single fruit, split and studied. Up close it resolves into a field of controlled scratches, a surface built entirely from what has been taken away rather than laid on. Underneath the still life sits a second subject, the row of seeds as a kind of accounting, a small order kept beside a larger emptiness, the discipline of counting out what a wound leaves behind. A Wound Kept in Rows continues the Art on Mirror series by Tijs Dragtsma, in which scratched imagery is set into coloured mirror glass and the viewer becomes part of the work. A visual language where damage is not destruction, but structure, and where the mirror turns looking into taking part. "Some wounds are not hidden. They are counted, and kept in rows." About Art on Mirror – Red Art on Mirror is a body of work in which the image is scratched into coloured mirror glass, and the world in front of the work becomes part of it. Every line is cut into a deep red mirrored surface of acrylic glass. The scratches are always there, bright against the colour, while the surface around them keeps reflecting the room, the daylight and the person looking. From a distance the image reads clear and complete, a pale figure held in a field of red. Step closer and the work opens into a delicate web of individual marks, fine and deliberate, each one essential to the whole. Behind and between them the mirror does what a mirror does. It carries the room and the viewer into the composition, so the surroundings in the work change with the place where it hangs, while the image itself stays firmly in place. Light does not create the image. It sharpens it. The red ground absorbs and reflects, the scratched lines catch and hold, and under a focused spotlight the contrast deepens until the figure takes on a sculptural, almost luminous quality. In softer light the colour comes forward and the work settles into a quieter register, without ever losing its subject. Red is the colour of blood, of fire and of everything we cannot stay calm about. That is the emotional ground every work in this series is set against, and the subjects are chosen to belong to it. Art on Mirror continues the scratched imagery of Art with Scratch by Tijs Dragtsma on a new ground. Where the black works draw their power from absence, these draw it from reflection. The viewer is no longer only looking at the work. The viewer is in it. About the Artist My name is Tijs Dragtsma, founder of TD Fine Art Studio. As an artist, I am driven by a constant desire to explore new visual languages. I do not see art as a fixed style, but as an evolving field of discovery where material, structure, light and emotion come together. My work often begins with a simple question. How can a material speak in a new way. How can hardness become intimacy. How can precision create emotion. That search lies at the heart of everything I create. Within TD Fine Art Studio, each body of work is approached as its own world, with its own logic, atmosphere and visual identity. Some works are built through rhythm, repetition and structure. Others emerge through absence, shadow, reflection or tension. What connects them is a shared commitment to originality, clarity and emotional presence. I am fascinated by contrast. Between strength and fragility. Between control and feeling. Between what is visible and what is left open to interpretation. My goal is not simply to make an image, but to create a work that holds attention, invites reflection and continues to reveal itself over time. TD Fine Art Studio is the space in which these explorations come together. It is not only a studio, but an evolving artistic universe shaped by curiosity, precision and the ambition to create work that feels distinctive, intentional and alive.

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