{"product_id":"where-wings-become-fins","title":"Where Wings Become Fins","description":"\u003cp\u003eAt the top of this work, birds cross the black in tight formation, each wing sharp and lit against the dark. Follow the rows downward and the same wing slowly loses its feathers, gains a tail, and settles into a fish, without a seam or a single new line marking the change. By the lowest row the sky has quietly become water, and on the right edge the whole formation thins out and sinks back into the black, as if the void has not yet decided what the next body should be.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhere Wings Become Fins is a tribute to Sky and Water I by M. C. Escher, the tessellation in which Escher proved that a bird and a fish could share a single outline, the white of one becoming the black of the other, and that the whole of nature could be read as one shape changing its mind. It is an independent and unique work by Tijs Dragtsma, not a copy, a reproduction, a print or an edition of Escher's woodcut, and not made, authorised, endorsed or licensed by his estate or any foundation that carries his name.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEscher held his print in two colours and let a horizon carry the eye upward from fish to bird. Here the horizon is gone. The whole field lives inside one deep black, and what divides water from sky is not a line but light itself, falling from one side and picking out just enough of each body to let the eye complete the rest.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEvery bird and every fish is built from a field of fine scratches, worked directly into the acrylic glass, so the white seen here is not drawn but caught, light gathering where the surface has been opened and holding nothing where it has been left alone. The gaps between the shapes keep their native black, carrying their own outline as surely as the bodies around them do, which is the same trick Escher built his whole image on: nothing in this pattern is filler, not even the dark.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhere Wings Become Fins 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 images that shaped how we look, from another angle, another moment, or with a quiet twist.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSeen from across a room the piece reads as one held formation, suspended in black. Up close it breaks into a field of individual marks, each a small, exact decision, and the change from wing to fin turns out to be made of the same patient mark the whole way down. Light does not create the image here. It sharpens it, deepening the contrast between what moved through air and what now moves through water, without the work ever losing either.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A visual language where damage is not destruction, but structure.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMore about the artist, process and materials can be found on the About page.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eQuestions about this work, availability or shipping can be sent through the contact page.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"TD Fine Art Studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":60147769246021,"sku":null,"price":4500.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0904\/0724\/0005\/files\/Where_Wings_Become_Fins_thumbnail.jpg?v=1794259057","url":"https:\/\/tdfineartstudio.com\/products\/where-wings-become-fins","provider":"TD Fine Art Studio","version":"1.0","type":"link"}