MIKE NELSON A PSYCHIC VACUUM

Sponsored by Creative Time ^ The Old Essex Street Market, New York by GRAHAM T. BECK
O
nce I'd poked my head into the filthy
walk-in freezer, carefully pulled the latch
handle and stepped inside far enough to be
in but not so far that the door could close
I felt my heart rate rise and my skin tingle. I
recognized this feeling, I had experienced it
before, crawling under chain-link fences into
abandoned lots or wandering the floors of de-
caying buildings. I had on those occasions
been exploring the remnants of progress, and
I was excited by it: I was excited by the thrill of
trespassing, by a fear of tetanus and rats and by
exposure to a secret world. But this wasn't ex-
ploring a derelict space at all: I'd signed a waiv-
er, taken a ticket and been ushered into Mike
Nelson's A Psychic Vacuum (2007) by a smiling
staff person from Creative Time.
The British-born artist's first major installa-
tion in North America is a dense labyrinth of
dilapidated rooms related to each other, the
building that houses them, the city they inhab-
it and the country playing host through a logic
of urban myths and seedy sides. An abandoned
Chinese restaurant doubles as the installation's
entrance. Trash overflows from rusted deep-
fryer baskets and out-of-date calendar pages
litter the floor. From there, the choice of doors
begins. Like The Coral Reef {1006), the instal-
lation that landed Nelson on the Turner Prize
shortlist in 2001 (he was on it again last year),
A Psychic Vacuum uses a maze of highly de-
tailed rooms to conjure narratives about char-
acters on the margins of society. The complex,
substructural ecosystemnamed in the title of
his earlier work, and invoked by the formation
of this more recent oneis a kind of metaphor
for capitalism. Nelson has said the rooms that
comprise the piece resemble the intricate, out
of sight but ever present network of individu-
al organisms below the shimmering surface of
a monolithic economic structure.
In A Psychic Vacuum, every space is the set-
ting for a hauntingly plausible 21st-century
tall tale: an empty auto garage with a baseball
bat leaning against the wall, Vodun shrines, a
bar suitable for brawls, waiting rooms for God
only knows what. Areas mimic one another.
Doors don't open. Doubling-back is demand-
ed. A story is co-authored by the spectator's
stuttering stroll and by the space itself, a de
Tocquevillean tale about the imagined and as-
sumed back alleys of America's fears and de-
sires. Each of the rooms inA Psychic Vacuum is
highly specific, assembled and decorated with
meticulously curated refuse. The red light of a
Mike Nelson, A Psychic Vacuum, 2007
P H O T O : CHARLIE SAMUELS
tattoo gun's power supply glows while a ceiling
fan clacks a haunting, lonely note; an Ameri-
can flag lies balled up and browned on a closet
floor; the western half of a US highway map is
tacked to a wall, torn in two near the Mississip-
pi river. There is a near-perfect attention to the
adornment of abandonment. The construction
is so refined that it leaves one fearful of what is
next, whether constructed or not.
There are moments where the simulation
falls short. A Psychic Vacuum has slips, too:
fresh paint shines in places and patterned
wear peaks through. The wood fioor, built for
the installation, has an impossible bend with
screws that are obviously visible. And, at times,
the rooms themselves seem more of a set than
a setting. These chinks in the armour offer a
break from the density of design. The flaws
and glitches, along with a glut of perfect detail
provide a vantage point bolstered at both ends
of the credulity spectrum. A Psychic Vacuum is
both too much and not quite enough.
In an artist talk given a few days after the
installation opened. Nelson tied the title to
Stanislaw Lem's book .^ Perfect Vacuum (1971),
which is a compilation of reviews of nonexistent
texts. In the final lines of the titular essay, Lem
writes, "A Perfect Vacuum tums out to be a tale
of what is desired but is not to be had. It is a
book of ungranted wishes." The opposing re-
alities at work in A Psychic Vacuum echo this
relationship of desire and disappointment:
Nelson's rambling rooms offer such enticing
stories that both the body and the mind will-
ingly suspend disbelief and accept the obvi-
ously built areas as truly derelict ones. These
rooms, filled with the hopes and lives of down-
and-outs, arc so alluring that one can simul-
taneously see flaws and be spooked by dark
corners.
In the installation's final space, the largest
and most illuminated area in the show, pale
hills of sand form a cirque that spills towards
the door. I am able to see the daylight and
feel an openness that marks an end to the ad-
venture. For the first time since entering that
filthy walk-in freezer, I am given a place that
lacks the referential density that propelled me
through A Psychic Vacuum, and I'm thankful.
Careful artifice has given way to piles of dirt.
Feeling relief, 1 reflect on the relationship be-
tween spaces and fantasies, details and sugges-
tion. Mike Nelson's installation offers access to
an elusive aspect of our everyday lives, but it is
our desire to will this into reality that ensures
this show's success. >
44 C97 Spring Z008
I M* C( COUBTESY OF CREATIVE T IME