Mike Nelson, A Psychic Vacuum, (detail) Mixed media installation, 2007.

Biking through Manhattan in the fall of 2007, I came upon a strange scene on the Lower East Side. It was one of those shuttered, derelict buildings I had passed many times, but that day there was an intriguing opening in its brick facade: a blank door on Delancey Street, through which a trickle of people flowed into an eerie interior. I had unwittingly stumbled into A Psychic Vacuum, an installation by the British artist Mike Nelson. There were no catalogs or placards; no conceptually abstruse artist’s explanations; I wasn’t even sure whether the labyrinth of rooms I found on the other side of that rabbit-hole entrance was intentionally created or merely found, a fully-intact wonderland. Read More »