‘The Doors (LA Woman)’ is one of a series of door sculptures by Jim Lambie. Concertinaed like a fan, an ordinary domestic door is manipulated into an extraordinary object. Fixed horizontally to a wall, its original function becomes redundant, while mirrors on each end of it reveal fractured reflections.
The title ‘The Doors’ is a neat pun on the subject matter, but also makes wider cultural references. The most obvious link is to the legendary American rock group of the 1970s, The Doors, and to their acclaimed album ‘LA Woman’ of 1971. The band’s name was inspired by Aldous Huxley’s 1954 book, ‘The Doors of Perception’, in which he wrote of his hallucinatory experiences while under the influence of mescaline. In turn, Huxley’s book was inspired by William Blake (1757–1827), the 18th–century English artist and poet, who famously wrote ‘If the doors of perception were cleansed then everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.’
