Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - Stairs Without Up or Down

Six people climb six staircases inside the same room, one on every wall, one on the ceiling, one underfoot, and every one of them is certain the climb is heading up. None of them is wrong. None of them is right either. The cube holds all six directions at once, calm and plainly lit, as if contradiction were simply how this particular room works. The staircases meet nowhere and belong to no single floor, yet the room reads as whole from any corner, a six sided box with the ordinary comfort of a hallway and none of its ordinary rules. Each figure keeps their eyes on their own treads. None looks up, or down, to where the others are walking along what should, by any shared logic, be a wall. Nothing here was painted, printed or drawn. The cube, its six stairways and the six small figures climbing them exist because the acrylic glass has lost part of its surface, a field of fine scratches shaped into risers, corners and the long throw of shadow beneath each step. The image is always there, in daylight as much as under a single trained lamp. Light does not create what you see here, it sharpens it. Under a direct source the stairs deepen and gather their own shine, under a softer angle the same cube settles into something quieter and more distant, it reads differently from different angles, without ever losing the image. From across a room the cube reads as one calm architectural object, a box of light holding six figures paused mid climb. Close in, that certainty breaks apart into a field of individual marks, a surface that only resolves back into stairs and walls and walking people once the eye steps away again. Each of the six is convinced the other five have their gravity wrong. It is a small, almost comic disagreement, and also an old one, everyone measures up and down from wherever they happen to be standing. Look long enough and the room stops being a puzzle about staircases and starts asking a quieter question about your own. Stairs Without Up or Down 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 the patience and the quiet comedy of continuing to climb in a world that refuses to add up. The work is inspired by M. C. Escher and is an original composition, returning to a single question: which way is truly up, and who gets to decide. "Six people, six stairs, one room, and nobody climbing the wrong way." 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.

Schätzpreis:€3,500

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