“If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite.”

                                                                                                                                                                                         Aldous Huxley

The interactive installation “Doors Without Keys” manifests as a site-specific intervention, utilizing the medium of found objects to investigate the boundaries and transformative potential of human perception. The project draws its primary philosophical impetus from Aldous Huxley’s seminal conceptualization of the “doors of perception,” performing a critical deconstruction of the door as both a physical object and a psychological construct.

The installation comprises an ensemble of artistic objects, meticulously assembled from ready-made materials discovered and salvaged from the public sphere of the Pjatihatki district.

Old doors, furniture components, dry branches, and construction detritus are reconfigured into freestanding, abstract structures.

Crucially, these elements are systematically wrapped and bound in transparent plastic stretch film.

This transparent yet impenetrable layer performs a potent metaphor: it cleanses the objects, as if through a lens, yet simultaneously creates a visible, tactile barrier. The objects once functional barriers of entry (doors) are reborn as conceptual barriers in the communicative channel, challenging the viewer to question the distinction between openness and restriction.

By utilizing materials embedded with the history of their environment, I established a direct creative discourse with the urban landscape and its inhabitants. The modification and juxtaposition of these salvaged materials perform a subtle form of localized transformation.

The “Doors Without Keys” function not as traditional entrances, but as intellectual apertures, inviting the public to confront the infinite, not through physical passage, but through the re-evaluation of the familiar detritus that populates their everyday existence.

The project was implemented as an intervention in the public space of the village of Pyatikhatki.

2011

“Art under the sky”, Land-art festival Pjatihatki (RU)

Financial support:

Nikolai Moroz

Special thanks to:

ZIP art group (Eldar Ganeev, Evgeny Rimkevich, Vasily Subbotin, Stepan Subbotin)