Art Reviews : Whistling in the Dark With the Help of Michael Brewster

Walking into Michael Brewster’s acoustic installation at Bennett Roberts Fine Art feels like falling, very slowly, into an invisible drawing. You have to close your eyes and concentrate to “see” the shifting patterns composed by the series of crisp whistles emitted by four small devices--they resemble elegant smoke-detectors--the artist has placed at ear level in each of the corners of the 20-foot-square gallery.

From the moment you push a button at each mechanism’s center, it whistles, approximately every 7 1/2 seconds for about five minutes. No two devices are set at exactly the same interval, so different ones seem to lag further and further behind others, only to catch up with still others, forming shifting repetitions that seem to compress and extend time.

At first it’s a challenge just to determine which corner the quick whistles come from. Very shortly, however, you find yourself imagining that a pair of Brewster’s acoustic units are calling and responding to each other like birds. This impression dissipates as the intervals alter between whistles, reminding visitors that these narrative associations are impositions and have little to do with the sounds themselves.

The beauty of Brewster’s piece resides in its capacity to get viewers to see (or listeners to acknowledge) that even our most passive, neutral perceptions are instantaneously colored by the interpretations we bring to them. It’s nearly impossible to disentangle what we perceive from what we make of these phenomena. Against our wills, meaning immediately sneaks into the picture, even when the picture is resoundingly abstract and minimal.

The power of Brewster’s art resides in its capacity to convince us that what we expect to see or hear often prevents us from seeing or hearing what’s actually there. By inviting us to scrutinize those points where existing phenomena are shaded or slanted by our interpretations of them, his nearly immaterial work draws us more closely to our surroundings, heightening our awareness of our places in the world.

* Bennett Roberts Fine Art, 1718 S. Carmelina Ave., (310) 207-5544, through May 31. Closed Sunday through Tuesday.