Tom Marioni, Café Society, Breens Café-Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco, 1979 (from left, Howard Fried, Mary Hellman, her dog, David Ireland, others unknown); photographer unknown; Courtesy Tom Marioni; © Tom Marioni
New arts space YU Contemporary is sure starting out with a bang. I’ve heard reams about the impact of the Portland Center for the Visual Arts on the 70′s art scene in Portland. YU’s opening exhibit is a retrospective of the PCVA’s collection and features a new installation by San Francisco-based artist Tom Marioni.
Marioni has been a seminal figure in Conceptual Art since the 1960s, encompassing sculpture, drawing, experimental music, and performance. Marioni first presented The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art in 1970 at the Oakland Museum, CA., and continued the action as a weekly event in various incarnations held at the Museum of Conceptual Art, SF—Marioni’s art space for conceptual installation and performance pieces. Since 1973, he has held weekly gatherings of friends each Wednesday night at the bar in his own studio. According to the artist, this piece “comes out of my art school days of drinking beer with my friends. For more than 30 years I have been hosting a salon and artists’ club in my studio and galleries as an interactive installation that is site- specific, audience- participation, social sculpture”.