Spider-Man Traced in Red

Spider-Man needs no introduction, yet here he is reduced to almost nothing: a head, two eyes, a web that was never painted but pulled out of the surface itself. This work holds the mask as a trace of light suspended in deep red coloured mirror glass, the shape held together by a field of individual marks rather than by colour or print.

No paint, no print, no ink. The image sits in the surface of the glass, formed by controlled scratches that catch and scatter light while the untouched red around them stays whole, dark, closed. The eyes are drawn in a single thick line and left hollow, the web radiates outward from a point between them, a signal more than a face.

Red carries the subject here as much as the drawing does. It is the colour of the suit, of warning, of a heartbeat under pressure, the colour the city turns to under a certain kind of streetlight. Set into red coloured mirror glass, the mask stops being a costume and becomes an alarm, a presence that holds the room rather than decorates it.

The mirror is part of the work. Around the traced head, the glass gives back the room exactly as it is: the walls, the light fixtures, whoever is standing in front of it. The viewer is pulled into the same red field the mask occupies, no longer separate from the image but held inside it.

Light does not create this image. It sharpens it. The mask is visible under any light, and under a directed beam the scratches deepen in contrast and begin to hold more shine, while only the reflection around it changes with the room.

From across a room the head reads instantly, a single recognisable silhouette traced in white against red. Close up it dissolves into a field of fine scratches, each one placed on its own, none of them a line you could follow alone.

Spider-Man Traced in Red 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. This work is unique.

"A mask is a face you choose to show. This one is scratched into red, and it chooses you back."

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

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