A Room Scattered in Green

A single die, oversized and stripped of realism, does not stand whole in this work. It is scattered, its pips loosened into a field of individual marks that drift across the surface as if the throw were still in motion, the outcome not yet settled.

Green carries the memory of the gaming table here, the felt beneath every dice game ever played, the colour of chance held just before it turns into consequence. It is not decoration, it is the mood the whole image is built from.

The image exists because material was taken away, not added. No paint, no print, sits on this surface, only a field of controlled scratches worked directly into the coloured mirror glass until the die's pips began to glow out of the dark.

The image is always present, with or without direct light. Light does not create it, light sharpens it, deepening the contrast where the marks catch and pulling the surrounding room into sharper focus around them.

Step closer and the die dissolves into pure texture, an intimate field of individual scratches with no single form left to hold onto. Step back and it gathers itself into a shape suspended in deep green, monumental against all that dark.

Because this is coloured mirror glass, the room and the person standing in front of it are folded into the same green depth, appearing faintly between the scattered marks. The die was thrown once, in a story no one remembers, but the room scattered around it keeps being rewritten by whoever stands here now.

A Room Scattered 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.

"The dice are cast, and the room keeps watching."

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