A King Held in Green
A King Held in Green
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In the deep green coloured mirror glass, a lion's face emerges without the mane that usually announces it. In its place sits a crown of oak leaves, overlapping like the plates of an old shield, formed not by paint but by a field of individual marks scratched into the surface itself.
The eyes hold the viewer directly, unmoved, while the brow, the muzzle and the tips of the leaves catch the one source of light the work allows. The rest of the head sinks into black, a king's face withheld as much as it is revealed, dramatic and economical in equal measure.
Green carries a weight here it would not carry elsewhere, the colour of oak leaves before the fall, of permanence rather than display, a crown grown rather than bestowed. Set into coloured mirror glass, the king's authority starts to feel closer to nature's own, quieter, and older than any throne.
From across the room the work reads as a single commanding presence, a portrait cut whole from the dark. Up close, that presence dissolves into a field of fine scratches, controlled surface damage that only resolves back into a face at a distance. The image sits in the surface itself, not applied onto it, so it stays present in every light.
Around the lion, the mirror holds the room and the person standing in front of it. Gallery walls, other works, your own outline settle into the dark green field surrounding the king, so that looking at him means appearing beside him. Light does not create the image, it sharpens it, deepening the contrast without ever changing what is shown.
A King Held in Green 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.
"Not crowned. Grown."
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