A Pulse Drawn in Fire

A Pulse Drawn in Fire begins with the oldest instrument the body owns. The heart, opened in cutaway, its arch and vessels caught mid breath, is formed not by paint or print but by controlled removal from the surface of deep red mirror glass.

The aorta rises in a single bright curve, and the branching arteries thin into a field of fine scratches that read, from across a room, as one glowing organ suspended in the dark. Closer, that glow dissolves into a field of individual marks, none of them the image on its own, one vessel opening left as a closed dark cavity where the light does not reach.

Red carries this piece the way blood carries a body, the colour of what a heart moves and, here, of what it quietly withholds.

The image is always present, with or without a spotlight above it. Light does not create it. It sharpens it, deepening the contrast between the scratched vessels and the black they rise from.

Because the ground is coloured mirror glass, the room folds into the piece. Whatever stands in front of it, a body, a lamp, another wall, settles into the dark between the scratches, so the viewer becomes part of the composition rather than someone looking on from outside.

A Pulse Drawn in Fire 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. This work is unique.

"A heart, held open, still keeping one room dark."

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

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