Tijs Dragtsma (1992) - The Knight's Impossible Stair

A white knight stands at the center of a chessboard that has stopped agreeing with itself, the floor tilting upward into a wall, the wall curving into a ceiling, every black and white square carrying the room along with it. A single staircase grows straight out of the board and climbs toward the knight's own small pedestal, as if the piece had simply stepped off its square and kept going. No paint. No print. No ink. The checkered floor, the rising stair and the glow around the knight exist because the acrylic glass has had its surface taken from it, a field of individual marks worked into controlled surface damage until each pale square and every tread of the staircase holds its own quiet shine. The image is always present in the glass, visible at any hour and from any angle. Light does not create what is here, it sharpens it: under a direct source the checkered floor deepens into contrast and the staircase seems to gather another step, while in softer light the same board settles, quieter, and still complete. It reads differently from different angles, without ever losing the image. From across a room the piece reads as a single architectural fact, a board that bends the way no board should. Up close that certainty gives way to a field of fine scratches, the structure resolving into the controlled surface damage that built it, and the knight remains the one dark shape standing still in the middle of all that light. A knight moves across a chessboard the way nothing else on it does, sideways and forward at once, the one piece that never goes where logic expects. Here it is given a staircase built from the same impossible logic, rules that hold on every square and refuse to add up across the whole board, and still the piece is halfway up, going on regardless. The Knight's Impossible Stair belongs to Look Twice, 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 holding the patience, and the quiet comedy, of continuing to climb when the ground no longer agrees with itself. "The board keeps its own rules. The knight keeps climbing." About Art with Scratch Art with Scratch is a body of work in which the image is not drawn, but released. Carved line by line into a deep black surface, each work emerges through countless precise scratches that catch the light and bring form out of darkness. From a distance, the image appears almost photographic. Powerful, recognisable and full of presence. Yet up close, the work dissolves into a dense field of individual marks. Fine, fragile and almost weightless. What seemed solid reveals itself as a delicate web of lines, each one a deliberate gesture, each one essential to the whole. Light does not create the image. It sharpens it. The black surface absorbs, while the scratched lines reflect. As light shifts across the surface, the image breathes. From one angle the figure stands clear and defined. From another it softens and settles back toward the darkness from which it came, without ever disappearing. Under a focused spotlight, the contrast deepens and the image takes on a sculptural, almost luminous quality. What makes this medium so compelling is its quiet tension. The act of scratching is direct and irreversible. Every line is a decision that cannot be undone. Yet the result is not harsh. It is intimate, atmospheric and alive with movement. Hardness becomes softness. Destruction becomes creation. Absence becomes presence. In works such as this portrait, the figure is never fully fixed. Through the interplay of line, light and shadow, the image shifts with perspective and atmosphere. At certain moments, the subject seems to step forward out of the black. At others, it settles back into stillness. It is within that movement, between sharpness and calm, that the work comes alive. Like all materials touched by time, the surface carries its own quiet life. Each scratch holds a moment, a breath, a gesture. Together they form not just an image, but a presence, one that continues to reveal itself with every change of light. About the Artist My name is Tijs Dragtsma, founder of TD Fine Art Studio. As an artist, I am driven by a constant desire to explore new visual languages. I do not see art as a fixed style, but as an evolving field of discovery where material, structure, light and emotion come together. My work often begins with a simple question. How can a material speak in a new way. How can hardness become intimacy. How can precision create emotion. That search lies at the heart of everything I create. Within TD Fine Art Studio, each body of work is approached as its own world, with its own logic, atmosphere and visual identity. Some works are built through rhythm, repetition and structure. Others emerge through absence, shadow, reflection or tension. What connects them is a shared commitment to originality, clarity and emotional presence. I am fascinated by contrast. Between strength and fragility. Between control and feeling. Between what is visible and what is left open to interpretation. My goal is not simply to make an image, but to create a work that holds attention, invites reflection and continues to reveal itself over time. TD Fine Art Studio is the space in which these explorations come together. It is not only a studio, but an evolving artistic universe shaped by curiosity, precision and the ambition to create work that feels distinctive, intentional and alive. This listing contains AI-generated visualisations. Please refer to the original photographs to assess the actual condition of the object.

Estimation:€3,500

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