Stanley Brouwn at Yvon Lambert

Born in 1935 in Paramaribo, Suriname, and now living and working in Amsterdam, Stanley Brouwn recently had his first survey in the U.S. since 1989. His work of the '60s--along with that of Sol LeWitt, Hanne Darboven and On Kawara--helped define some of the key tenets and methodologies of Conceptual art. Brouwn's insistence on withholding from the public his biography and bibliography as well as reproductions of his work, however, has prevented his oeuvre from being more widely known.

In 1960, Brouwn announced that all the shoe stores in Amsterdam were to be considered his exhibition. Taking up and advancing the legacy of Duchamp's readymades, this "exhibition" foreshadowed Brouwn's movement away from collectible art toward participatory activities that functioned within real-world contexts. His work of the early '60s involved walks, interviews with passersby and measurements of his environment. Brouwn asked random pedestrians to describe routes to other points in the city, for example, privileging cooperation as much as the works themselves. In the early '70s he used his own footsteps as data for verbal instructions of procedures that might--or might not--be undertaken, the written words being the only necessary visual elements in a sculptural activity that circumscribed a potential spatial/temporal experience.

Brouwn's continued interest in distances and units of measurement was evident in the 15 works from 1999 to 2005 presented in New York. The verbal and linear relationships between different countries' measuring systems were laid out as a graph in 1m=100 cm.; 1 yard=91, 4 cm.; 1 tolza=100,8 cm.; 1 ken=108.2 cm. (1993), which illuminated the regional dimensions of distance and measure. The spare simplicity and directness of Brouwn's diagrams, drawn in light pencil on plain white paper, correspond to the handwritten verbal descriptions of diverse and even esoteric systems of measurement that function both as titles and explanations. 1 x 1 ell divided in 8 triangles (2003) on a sheet of paper (47 x 47 cm.) on a wall (25'4" x 11'8") of galerie yvon lambert in new york from 19.11.2005 until 14.01.2006 was one of several works that Brouwn has reinvented merely by placing them in a new context; this drawing reprises an earlier one of a square divided by two intersecting lines, inscribed on a square piece of paper. After 45 years, Brouwn's matter-of-fact computations of physical and mental journeys, and the locations they occupy in real and conceptual space, continue to challenge the viewer's expectations of what a work of art can and should be.

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