Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - A Gate Held in Red

A torii gate stands alone in the frame, drawn in nothing but line and light, the threshold that in Japan has always marked the passage from the ordinary world into the sacred one. Here it is held in red coloured mirror glass, the colour the gate itself has worn for centuries, the colour of protection, of purification, of a boundary that asks to be noticed before it is crossed.

The image is not painted or printed onto the glass. It is scratched into it, a field of individual marks that catch the light along one pillar and the curve of the lintel, while the other side of the gate stays folded into the red, present but withheld. No paint, no ink, only removal, only what has been taken away to let the gate step forward.

Seen from across a room the work reads as a single clean silhouette, monumental and still. Move closer and that silhouette opens into a field of fine scratches, each one small, each one necessary, the kind of surface that rewards patience the way a shrine rewards a slow approach.

Because this is mirror glass, the room you stand in becomes part of the piece. Your own reflection, the walls around you, the light overhead, all of it settles into the red behind the gate, so that you are not looking at a torii from the outside, you are standing inside the threshold with it.

The gate itself is a marker of in between, not fully temple, not fully world, a frame you walk through rather than a wall you stop at. Held half in light and half kept back in shadow, it carries that same tension into the glass, one side reaching toward you, the other side keeping its distance.

The image is always there, with or without direct light. Light does not create it. It sharpens it, deepens the contrast between the marked surface and the red that surrounds it, while what shifts with the room is only the reflection, never the gate.

This work 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 gate does not need to move to ask you to pass through it.'

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.