A Grid Suspended in Depth

A disco ball hangs from a thin chain, suspended in a field of deep blue. In this new Art on Mirror piece, the object is stripped back to its bones: the grid of facet lines, a scatter of sparkle bursts, and nothing more. Everything else is left to the blue, untouched, so the ball reads less as an object than as a structure of light holding its own shape in the glass.

The image is formed by removal, not addition. Where the surface has been worked, a field of fine marks and coarse halftone dots catches the light and glows against the coloured mirror glass beneath. Where it has not, the ball falls away into silhouette, half revealed and half withheld, so the sphere seems to turn between visibility and shadow without ever fully resolving into either.

The disco ball carries its own memory: of rooms once full of movement, of light thrown across a crowd that has since gone quiet. Here that motion is stilled into a single, suspended gesture, a grid holding depth rather than spinning it, monumental from a distance and, up close, a surface built entirely from a field of individual marks.

Blue carries the mood of the piece, the colour of night, of distance, of a room remembered after the music has stopped. It gives the ball its stillness and its weight, a quiet counterpart to the celebration the object usually stands for.

The coloured mirror glass is part of the work. Around and between the scratches, the room and the person standing before it are folded into the surface, so the viewer becomes part of the composition rather than someone simply looking at it. Step closer or further away, and the reflection shifts while the grid itself holds its ground.

Light does not create this image. It sharpens it, deepening the contrast between the glowing grid and the dark body it hangs from, without ever changing what is there. 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 visual language where damage is not destruction, but structure, and where the mirror turns looking into taking part.

"A grid of light, suspended in blue, holding its shape long after the room has gone still."

More about the artist, process and materials can be found on the About page.

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