Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - Sugar Skin Set Aflame

Sugar Skin Set Aflame begins with a candy apple, its skin pulled taut and glazed until it looks less like fruit than like a small, edible flame. That gloss, that impossible shine, is the starting point for a work carried out in deep red mirror glass, where the object is not painted or printed onto the surface but drawn out of it through controlled surface damage. What remains after the removal is not a picture of the apple so much as its afterglow. A field of fine scratches traces the outline of the fruit and its stem, gathering into a bright, uneven corona that seems to lift off the surface like light caught mid burn. Toward the center the glass stays untouched, dark and mirrored, holding the shape of the apple as an open, reflective void rather than a filled in form. Red carries the weight of the piece. It is the colour of the candy shell itself, of appetite and warning in the same breath, of a fruit that has always stood for temptation offered a little too sweetly. Held in coloured mirror glass, that red becomes both surface and depth, showing through the scratches and deepening where the apple's body should be. Because the image is scratched into the surface rather than applied onto it, the marks are always present, in daylight and in dark. Light does not create this apple, it sharpens it, deepening the corona and letting the dark center hold its reflection more fully. What changes with the room is never the image itself, only the world caught glowing and shifting around it. That world includes whoever is standing in front of the work. The dark heart of the apple is glass enough to hold a reflection, so the viewer's own outline settles inside the fruit's silhouette, briefly and quietly complicit in its sweetness. Seen from a distance the piece reads as one monumental, burning shape, and up close it resolves into a field of individual marks, each one part of a larger heat. Sugar Skin Set Aflame 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. "Even sugar, pulled thin enough, starts to look like fire." 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. This listing contains AI-generated visualisations. Please refer to the original photographs to assess the actual condition of the object.

Estimate:£2,929.68

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