Jim Lambie: Zobop (Colour-Chrome)

Jim Lambie transforms everyday architectural spaces into immersive, energetic experiences through his vibrant vinyl tape installations. This site-specific stair work is an extension of his acclaimed Zobop series and uses brightly coloured strips of industrial vinyl tape to contour the shape of a staircase, wrapping its form in optical rhythm and vivid saturation.

Lambie is a Glasgow–based artist, DJ and musician. His practice draws from pop culture, music and Minimalism, and he often uses inexpensive, ready-made materials. In the Zobop works, which date back to the late 1990s, he meticulously applies tape in concentric patterns that respond to and amplify the geometry of the space. The effect is both playful and disorienting—simultaneously flattening and deepening the visual field.

Installed directly onto the stairs and floor of the Gallery’s Rotunda, Zobop (Colour-Chrome) (2019/2025) blurs the boundaries between sculpture, installation and drawing. The works activate the act of moving through space, turning the mundane journey up or down a stairwell into a psychedelic, performative experience and radically shifting how we understand place—in this iteration, the Gallery’s neo-colonial architecture.