NEW YORK

Mike Nelson
Essex Street Market
Set within the unused and deterio-
rating interior of the old Essex
Street Market in Manhattan's
Lower East Side and filled with nar-
row corridors, crumbling walls,
numerous rooms, and many doors,
Mike Nelson's A Psychic Vacuum
served up a kind of conceptual fun-
house of the down and out, one
that literally and metaphorically
reeked of forgotten histories and
intimate ghostly narratives. This
journey into the heart of urban
decay began with the signing of a
waiver, absolving New York City
and Creative Time, the project's
sponsor, of any liability for injury or
madness that might ensue. A glass
door led into the darkened interior
of an abandoned Chinese restau
rant, its grimy residue left intact,
a green neon light casting an eerie
glow about the premises. Dis
torting vision, this decrepit space
viscerally defined the experience
from the start as fictive-modern-
day reality overlaid with a carefully
constructed waking dream. Each
passageway and room continued
this artful theatricality of genuine
and fake: walls painted in a shift-
ing palette of earthen red, light
green, yellow, and blue seemed
authentic, as did the lighting,
which changed from fluorescent
to neon, sconce, and period table
lamps, and the numerous doors
of different sizes, types, and eras,
which offered or denied entry.
These subtly colored and carefully
[it spaces contained various
arrangements of objects, gathered
either locally or from Nelson's trav-
els across the U.S. Ranging from tat-
too charts, tarot cards, lamps, cross
es, maps, and photographs to a fish
tank, a stuffed bear, and a bed,
these mini-installations were often
casually placed, as if just discovered
and waiting for the assignment of
meaning.
Mike Nelson, A Psychic Vacuum,
2007. Mixed media, two views of
multi-part installation.
Several full-scale re creations-
including a bar, complete with
knocked-over stool, neon beer
sign, and cash register, a control
booth for a radio station- and
what looked like the lobby of a
seedy hotel-also awaited inter-
pretation. Some of these larger
installations came across as over
wrought for instance, the brick
corridor ending in a narrow room
where baseball bats and a strait-
jacket were disturbingly, yet artfully
arranged or the tattoo parlor that
could double as a torture chamber.
Often these rooms replicated
stereotypical scenarios of tene-
ment life filled with drunkenness
and lunacy. Other installations,
such as the one containing '6os
memorabilia and a portrait of
Jackie and JFK, relied on nostalgia
to tell their story. At the very end
of the labyrinth, a darkroom
reminded us that this whole pas
sage through time, space, and
memory was both a production and
a reproduction. The expansive final
space, a large interior filled nearly
to the ceiling with sand, shifted
the meaning once again, becom
ing a giant sandbox or perhaps an
hourglass where past and present
might come together in imagina-
tive play.
Each viewer was dealt a series
of choices, interpretations, or pos-
sibilities- like the tarot cards at
a seance. As historical reconstruc-
tion played off against chance, one
could decide which door to open
or which hallway to follow, discov-
ering in the confusion of rooms
the porous nature of memory and
artifice of history. As loving as this
act of reclamation was, however,
it also appeared stuck in remem-
brance of a time long since past.
Even as A Psychic Vacuum asked us
to contemplate the void and fill it
with meaning, its marketplace set
ting was being considered for rede-
velopment. Speaking more to the
desire for entertainment than to
either past ghosts or present-day
gentrification, Nelson's maze, with
its historical pastiche and taste
for the macabre, might easily have
been confused with a Halloween
house of horrors or the Tenement
Museum around the corner.
-Susan Conning
Sculpture
I
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
TITLE: Mike Nelson: Essex Street Market
SOURCE: Sculpture 27 no5 Je 2008
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