Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - The Wall Remembers Their Kiss

A lamp post holds one small bulb, just enough light to seat an old couple on a bench and nothing more. Behind them the wall receives that modest light and gives back a figure nearly twice their height, upright, close, caught at the exact instant of a kiss. The shape on the wall does not belong to the two people sitting. It is a young woman and a young man, her hand folded into his, her face lifted toward his, holding a closeness that the seated bodies below are no longer arranged to perform, not because it left them, but because the wall kept the version of them that once could. No paint. No print. No ink. The glow across the wall exists only where controlled scratches have opened the acrylic glass, a field of individual marks that catches the lamp's small light and returns it as something larger than its source. The image is always present, in daylight as much as after dark. Light does not create it, it sharpens it, deepening the line between the couple who are sitting and the couple who are only ever shown in outline. The Wall Remembers Their Kiss belongs to Look Twice, a series within Art with Scratch by Tijs Dragtsma in which imagery is constructed through controlled surface damage rather than pigment or print, and in which that same damage becomes a way of holding two ages of the same love within a single wall of light. From across a room the wall reads as weather, a pale surface roughened the way old plaster roughens under years of damp and repair. Only on approach does that roughness resolve into the shape it was holding all along, two young bodies pressed into a kiss, their outline cut clean and black against everything the scratches have opened around them. Nothing here suggests the old couple have lost what the wall still shows them. It reads instead as a quiet argument, that some postures outlast the bodies that first learned them, that a wall lit the right way can go on holding a kiss long after the people who gave it have simply grown older beside it. "Some postures the body forgets. The wall does not." About Art with Scratch Art with Scratch is a body of work in which the image is not drawn, but released. Carved line by line into a deep black surface, each work emerges through countless precise scratches that catch the light and bring form out of darkness. From a distance, the image appears almost photographic. Powerful, recognisable and full of presence. Yet up close, the work dissolves into a dense field of individual marks. Fine, fragile and almost weightless. What seemed solid reveals itself as a delicate web of lines, each one a deliberate gesture, each one essential to the whole. Light does not create the image. It sharpens it. The black surface absorbs, while the scratched lines reflect. As light shifts across the surface, the image breathes. From one angle the figure stands clear and defined. From another it softens and settles back toward the darkness from which it came, without ever disappearing. Under a focused spotlight, the contrast deepens and the image takes on a sculptural, almost luminous quality. What makes this medium so compelling is its quiet tension. The act of scratching is direct and irreversible. Every line is a decision that cannot be undone. Yet the result is not harsh. It is intimate, atmospheric and alive with movement. Hardness becomes softness. Destruction becomes creation. Absence becomes presence. In works such as this portrait, the figure is never fully fixed. Through the interplay of line, light and shadow, the image shifts with perspective and atmosphere. At certain moments, the subject seems to step forward out of the black. At others, it settles back into stillness. It is within that movement, between sharpness and calm, that the work comes alive. Like all materials touched by time, the surface carries its own quiet life. Each scratch holds a moment, a breath, a gesture. Together they form not just an image, but a presence, one that continues to reveal itself with every change of light. 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. This listing contains AI-generated visualisations. Please refer to the original photographs to assess the actual condition of the object.

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