From 1984 to 2000, it hosted a wide range of one night activities, such as artist conversations, panel discussions, exhibitions, screenings and performances.
The organization consisted of two consecutive phases from 1984 to 1988 in Hoboken, New Jersey and from 1991 to 2000 in the Greenpoint Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.
Throughout its life Four Walls was situated in growing creative communities where it served to encourage an exchange of ideas and generated alternative ways of experiencing art.
Neither a commercial gallery nor a nonprofit, Four Walls had an informal and artist driven structure as opposed to a typical arts administration approach.
[3] Four Walls began as a single night exhibition space in Hoboken New Jersey by artist founders Adam Simon and Michele Araujo.
In response, the couple, with the help of many fellow artists, would begin to host one night exhibitions that included a forum for conversation.
[5][8] However, the format was flexible enough to accommodate a less academic approach that did not require addressing the exhibition directly but instead allowed for discussion of subjects related to the artworks on display.
Claire Pentecost would join Ballou, Simon and Sillman to form a core group of artist organizers.
Agreeing to reinitiate the project, Four Walls would be located at 138 Bayard Street in Brooklyn, New York [15] in a garage building with the events being hosted on the ground floor level.
In the Hoboken era, events were limited to two person exhibitions or group shows that included public conversations or panel discussions.
For example, the exhibition entitled 'The Naked Paint Show' in 1985 with James Bohary, Geoffrey Dorfman, Tracy Jones, Andy Miller and Pat Passlof.
As long as the proposed artwork's scale could be accommodated by the gallery space and that the number of predetermined artists was not exceeded, any applicant could participate in the exhibition.
The inaugural Blender Night was a collaboration between Ballou and Kurt Hoffman which consisted of an evening of erotic fiction and chamber music entitled 'The Honorable Discharge'.
Michael Ballou would continue The Four Walls Slide and Film Club after the closing of the Bayard Street location in 2000.
Unlike in the Hoboken period, these public conversations did not accompany an exhibition or an art opening and took place both in the Bayard Street location and elsewhere.
Real Democracy was an Open Show that allowed the first 100 people to call in to participate in the exhibition which was held on November 8.
Many other artists participated in the production of the model, such as Joe Amrheim, Loretta Lopez, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Barbara During, David Scher and many others.
Four Walls presented more than forty artworks representing the Statue of Liberty by artists from Brooklyn which were offered for exchange to the people of Brenner.
Like in the Hoboken era, the collective was founded in a decade when most artists living in these neighborhoods were discounted from the commercially focused Manhattan art world.
[1][26] However the term was never fully embraced by the Four Walls core organizers because they saw the alternative space category as reinforcing the roles of artist, curator, collector and funder and how these institutions addressed only an imagined public.