
Jaume Plensa: Wonderland
Art Outdoors /Jaume Plensa: Wonderland
Wonderland is a cast iron doorway on the external wall at the end of our visitor centre. It subtly plays with our expectations as it doesn’t open to allow us to pass through. Although it announces itself quietly, this sculpture speaks of our past, present and potential futures. As we stand in front of it, we are in the present moment, the sum of all our past experiences. What lies ahead in the future cannot be known, it is ripe with myriad different possibilities. Plensa uses the door as a symbol to signify a threshold between one moment and another, or a point in the journey of our lives.
Wonderland belongs to a wider series of 38 doors that the artist made in 1993 to mark his 38th birthday. The title is drawn from Alice in Wonderland and also refers to the many doors Alice passed through in the story, often shifting scale to do so. Plensa comments on how many of our perceived limits are self-imposed.

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