Yes, Christian Marclay has done it again, splicing snippets of movies the way mosaicists of Byzantium placed their jewel-like tesserae. The 24-hour loop of The Clock (which premiered in 2010) synchronizes thousands of “time-stamped” clips to the 1440 minutes of the day wherever and whenever the work is shown. What does it not contain? At 54 minutes, Marclay’s Doors (2022) lacks The Clock’s magisterial conceptual rigor. It hovers forever in liminal space, where celluloid phantoms phase from identity to identity. They knock on doors, slide bolts or turn keys in locks, tiptoe or sweep or tumble across threshold after threshold into an infinity of of alternate realties, propelled by forces we never know. As in The Clock, Marclay’s infinitely varied art of the dynamic montage keeps his viewer firmly on the hook. But in Doors, time stands virtually still, ever biting itself in the tail. Oh, look! There’s that clerk again, back at his boss’s desk to collect an all-important folder (“I forgot the money”). There’s that furious Sidney Poitier, exploding into a hallway of white schoolboys. Also the squeaky babe in her polka-dot baby doll and a bow in her hair as big as the Ritz. That sphinxlike Parisienne who could out-Garbo Garbo. A rumpled John Wayne in a crumpled Stetson. A whippet-trim John Travolta, waistline ca. 28 inches, in a mint-condition Stetson. And, wow!, Brigitte Bardot, all innocence, walking in again and again. Rumor has it that the Bardot cameo is an artefact somehow manufactured just for Marclay’s project. Be that as it may, if you loved The Clock, you’ll like Doors a lot. —Matthew Gurewitsch