Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - A Rocket Exhales Into Dark

Kim Jong-un looks up at the one thing in the frame he cannot command. This is satire: an invented scene and an opinion made visible, not a report. The missile that answers to no one else's schedule has become, for the length of this image, a toy losing its breath on a string. In the finished work the balloon keeps everything the man is losing. No paint and no print, only a field of fine scratches worked into the acrylic glass, dense enough at the nose cone and the painted porthole to catch real light, so the object reads before the figure does, exactly as a toy is built to be noticed first. The string pulls the eye straight down to the hand that holds it, built with the same close attention, knuckles and grip worked into their own small knot of light. Between balloon and fist nothing else is given, so the thin taut line becomes the one connection the image allows between a man and the thing he is watching fail. His face survives as a quieter field, brow, cheekbone and the set of the mouth held just enough to be read, the collar and shoulder thinning into scattered marks that give out before they reach the rest of the coat. Chest, arm and the long fall of the jacket below are returned almost entirely to black, a silhouette standing guard over a face it is no longer willing to fully illuminate. A balloon has no engine, no warhead, no schedule, only air, and air is the one thing that always finds its way out. The image asks what is left of a threat once its shape depends on something as ordinary as breath, and lets the leader keep watching long after there is nothing left to watch rise. A Rocket Exhales Into Dark belongs to Heads of State, 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 catching power at the exact moment its own symbols stop performing for it. "A rocket that only ever had air to lose." 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.

Estimación:€3,500

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