“One object in particular creates a situation that hands are laid on you—not literally but figuratively…I’m hoping it’ll be a transcendental moment,” Peter Nelson was quoted as saying in an SF Chronicle review of his recent installation at Blankspace gallery in Oakland. Later in the review he’s attributed with: “I’m hoping that a connection is created so that the situation is similar to the revival.” Artists are often filled with such hopes for their work. This seems perfectly natural, especially if one views their work as a medium for communication—an attempt to articulate things that cannot simply be spoken or shown but must be felt.

Installation art seems to literalize this desire, often creating multi-sensory environments meant to provide viewers with an immersive experience. Nelson’s There Ain’t No Party Like a Holy Ghost Party was no exception, notably engaging one’s sense of taste and sensitivity to alcohol, and setting the stage as it were for the “situation” to which he so cagily refered.

I hadn’t yet read the Chronicle review when I visited Blankspace and found myself in that situation. I must admit I was initially drawn to There Ain’t No Party Like a Holy Ghost Party for the title. I wasn’t expecting an actual party or a moment of revelation but perhaps a manifestation of the ineffable—an answer to ‘how does one make belief visible?’ Instead the Holy Ghost party in question felt a bit like what I imagine it would feel like to be a contestant on The Price Is Right—only without the audience, lights, camera crew, and Bob Barker.

Peter Nelson, There Ain’t No Party Like a Holy Ghost Party, 2007. Mixed media installation

Nelson’s stage consisted of two roughly made platforms. On the left one, two large speakers were stacked such that they faced each other. On the right, a de-clawed claw foot tub was laid on its side. A tube connected a small cask inside the tub to a freestanding drinking fountain. There was a projection of a live video feed from the vantage point of the fountain (a close-up of the point at which water and lips meet). There were two awkwardly placed wooden benches between the projection screen and the tub. Amens and praise the lords came in seemingly random bursts from the speakers.

It took me awhile to figure out that the peice was interactive. In fact the gallerist who’d come out to fiddle with the computer prompted me. He told me the drinking fountain was filled with whiskey (supplied by the cask, I thought). Without much hesitation I stooped to drink and sure enough the clear liquid that trickled up from the fountain tasted sweet and burned. Willie Nelson’s Whiskey River ran through my mind. Again I heard the passionate encouragement of a preacher and his parishioners and understood that drinking from the fountain triggered those shouting zealots. This is as close as I would get to a “transcendental moment.”

At first I thought all the clumsy lead-up to the moment when alcohol and religious fervor collided had ruined the experience for me, but even if my confusion were replaced with a seamless surprise I doubt it would have been transcendent. In the end I found the situation too forced, too diagrammatic, and too mediated. A problem with me, a problem with interactive artwork, a problem with the gallery context, or quite likely all of these—creating a connection to people through artwork is an immanently challenging task. The cynical among us might even argue, wrong-headed. And yet this is what many artists strive for. I know it is what I’m looking for.

In light of the …Holy Ghost Party I found myself thinking about the relationship between the faith in God held by true believers and the hope that artist have for their work to be revelatory and to be shared (and inversely, the hope art goers have for being touched by art). Though art and religion have been largely separated into mutually exclusive spheres there is some lingering overlap in the hope—the belief really—that the transcendent moment is not only real but accessible either through devotion and practice or because we are particularly receptive. That Nelson’s installation failed to reach me only underscored the hopefulness of the endeavor. For me it was a generative failure. And to be fair, perhaps I needed to spend a little more time at the drinking fountain.

There Ain’t No Party Like a Holy Ghost Party was on view from March 30th to April 24th, 2007. Information about future events and exhibitions at Blankspace can be had by visiting the Blankspace web site.