Artists Space

Michael Brewster:
An Acoustic Sculpture, A Clicker Drawing

April 2 – April 23, 1977

A black and white photograph of a person standing in a doorframe. On the left, a broom rests against the wall. A circular window behind a radiator is visible on the right. Buckets of paint and painting rollers are scattered across the floor.
Michael Brewster, An Acoustic Sculpture, A Clicker Drawing. View from Opening, April 2, 1977, Artists Space. [A black and white photograph of a person standing in a doorframe. On the left, a broom rests against the wall. A circular window behind a radiator is visible on the right. Buckets of paint and painting rollers are scattered across the floor.]

In an exchange with LAICA (Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art) an exhibition of sound installations by Los Angeles artist, Michael Brewster, will be at Artists Space from Saturday, April 2 through Saturday April 23. This is the second in an ongoing series of exhibitions and event exchanges with other alternative spaces. Five artists associated with Hallwalls, in Buffalo, showed at Artists Space in November 1976, while work by four artists from New York City was exhibited at Hallwalls in March of this year. Artists Space continues in its policy to show work by artists who have not had extensive exposure through other exhibition outlets and are not regularly affiliated with a commercial gallery. This allows for maximum attention to new developments in art and an ongoing look at work currently being done here and in other locations.

Michael Brewster’s work can be identified with what is considered a Los Angeles aesthetic, that involves spatial perception and the manipulation of such phenomena as light, and in this case, sound. Brewster’s work involves no visual information, with the exception of occasional sound speakers, and no physical alteration or treatment of the actual space. The only active element is the sound, which is variously identified and affected by the presence and movement of the viewer. The work becomes an interaction between sound, viewer, and space. The sounds generally occupy a space with considerable density that encourages the “viewer” to move about either to interrupt the sound, locate the length of the sound waves, or to find a “quiet spot.” One of the two installations Clicker Drawing, involves almost inaudible sounds imbedded in the walls of a room that over a period of time can be located and a pattern determined. Brewster has been working with sound since the early 1970’s.

A black and white photograph looking through a doorframe onto several barely illuminated rectangular shapes. A microphone hangs from the top right corner of the doorframe, pointed down towards the floor.
Michael Bewster, An Acoustic Sculpture, A Clicker Drawing. Installation view, Artists Space, 1977. [A black and white photograph looking through a doorframe onto several barely illuminated rectangular shapes. A microphone hangs from the top right corner of the doorframe, pointed down towards the floor.]

An Acoustic Sculpture, A Clicker Drawing Press Release

An Acoustic Sculpture, A Clicker Drawing Postcard

"Goings on About Town." The New Yorker. April 18, 1977. Print.

Zimmer, William. "Newsstand Images." The Soho Weekly News. April 21, 1977. Print, 20-21.

    A strip of black and white film negatives of a cavernous gallery space.
    Michael Brewster, An Acoustic Sculpture, 1977. Negatives of Installation views from An Acoustic Sculpture, A Clicker Drawing. Artists Space, 1977. [A strip of black and white film negatives of a cavernous gallery space.]