The World Held in One Palm

A hand rises out of the dark and opens its palm, and in the curve of the sphere it holds, an entire room folds itself into a single bent reflection, with a man seated at its centre, looking straight back out. The World Held in One Palm is a tribute to Hand with Reflecting Sphere by M. C. Escher, the self-portrait in which the artist held up his own studio and his own face, curved whole into the glass he was holding, proof that to see yourself clearly you first have to bend the whole world around you.

This is an independent and unique work by Tijs Dragtsma, not a copy, a reproduction, a print or an edition of Escher's lithograph, and not made, authorised, endorsed or licensed by his estate or any foundation that carries his name. It answers his gesture from another hour and another sitter, not the artist studying his own reflection, but a stranger, bearded and still, held inside a room that no longer answers to him.

Here the hand is the brightest thing in the frame, each finger and the deep lines of the palm built from a field of fine scratches that gather the light and hold it. The sphere's curve is drawn the same way, a thin bright seam bending a window and a bare room around the seated man at its centre. He himself stays close to silhouette, a dark figure kept inside the glow that surrounds him, present but withheld, more felt than seen, while beyond the hand the background keeps its full, untouched black.

No paint. No print. No ink. The image is formed by controlled scratches worked into the surface of the acrylic glass, not applied onto it, and it is always present, with or without direct light. Light does not create it. It sharpens it, so that under a raking beam the curve of the sphere deepens and the hand seems to lift further out of the dark.

The World Held in One Palm belongs to In Tribute, a series within Art with Scratch by Tijs Dragtsma in which imagery is constructed through controlled surface damage rather than pigment or print, and in which that same damage becomes a way of answering the landmarks of art history with a new voice, built from light and shadow rather than paint or line.

A visual language where damage is not destruction, but structure. The sphere holds a whole room. The hand holds the sphere. And somewhere inside all that curved light, someone sits and looks back.

"He holds the room. The room holds him."

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

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