Two Eyes Fused as One

Two Eyes Fused as One begins with almost nothing: a pair of curved horns catching a single hard light, and beneath them, a hollow so complete it swallows anything the eyes might have held. Where a demon mask usually stares back, this one offers a shared, black nothing instead, one socket standing in for two, and that absence unsettles more than any painted glare could.

The image is scratched into the surface of deep red coloured mirror glass, never applied on top of it. A field of individual marks catches and holds the light, tracing the curl of the horns, the ridge of the brow and the jagged crown of teeth below, while everything around the mask is left to the glass itself, dark, still, reflective. Red is not decoration here. It is the colour of the mask's own lacquer and of something older, warning, ritual, blood kept just under the skin, so the material and the subject share one colour and one meaning.

Light does not create this image. It sharpens it. In a dim room the mask still holds its shape, present rather than hidden; step closer with direct light and the contrast deepens, the horns lift off the surface, the mouth of teeth grows sharper. What shifts is never the mask itself but the room around it, folded into the red glass along with whoever stands in front of it.

That is the quiet trick of the piece. The eye holes are empty, but the mirror is not: your own reflection settles into the space where a stare should be, so the demon looks out at you with your own face, if only for as long as you look back. Monumental from across a room, the mask resolves up close into a field of fine scratches and nothing else, no ink, no print, no paint standing between you and the glass.

Two Eyes Fused as One 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.

"One hollow, two histories, and your own face filling the space where the eyes should be."

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

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