2005, Vacancy

Vacancy, a multimedia installation by Tempe artist John Nelson, uses the transient hotel as a metaphor for the needs and addictions we normally struggle against, the necessarily repressed and sublimated desires and fears that underlie our social lives. Like the vaudevillian hobo or clown, this space fills the potentially dangerous and usually depressing world of the marginalized and itinerant with black humor, simultaneously creating intimacy and distance. The aestheticization of the outsider both protects us from him and reflects our desire to be more like him. Through art, we momentarily escape ourselves without any real repercussions, except perhaps to recognize the vacancy in our own lives.