Hammer Museum Opens Tom Marioni’s First One-Person Exhibition in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES, CA.- For his first one-person exhibition in Los Angeles, Tom Marioni will present his on-going artwork The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art, first realized in 1970. Along with a bar-like installation and remains from each of the five gatherings he will host as part of the piece, the exhibition will feature a video, ephemera, and drawings, including two wall drawings created on site. For over forty years, Tom Marioni has been experimenting at the boundaries of art. His first art action—One Second Sculpture (1969) in which he released a coiled metal tape measure into the air and allowed it to fall to the ground—encapsulated his desire to eradicate the distinctions between sculpture, music, drawing, and performance by embodying all of the genres at once. A key figure in the invention of Conceptual Art in the 1960s, Marioni’s identity as artist, writer, and curator also defies categorization. In 1970, he founded the Museum of Conceptual Art in San Francisco as a venue to support his own work and that of his friends and colleagues, and he has published his writings in various periodicals and books. Through the decades, Marioni has continued to, in his words, “observe real life and report on it poetically”, amassing a body of work comprised of drawings, prints, actions, and writings that articulate his desire to unite people and ideas. Organized by Anne Ellegood, Hammer senior curator.

Tom Marioni was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1937 and lives in San Francisco. Since 1963, his work has been the subject of numerous one-person exhibitions, including Tom Marioni: Beer, Art and Philosophy (The Exhibition) 1968-2006, Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, Ohio (2006); Golden Rectangle, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, California (2004); The Artist’s Studio (Starting Over), Capp Street Project, San Francisco, California (1990); The Germans, the Italians, the Japanese, Museo ItaloAmericano, San Francisco, California and Yoh Art Gallery, Osaka, Japan (1987); Cutting the Mustard, Le Consortium, Dijon, France (1984); The Museum of Conceptual Art at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California (1979); and The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art, Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California (1970). Marioni’s work has been featured in thematic exhibitions internationally, and he has staged his performances and actions at venues around the world. He is the author of publications including Beer, Art, and Philosophy: A Memoir, published by Crown Point Press, San Francisco.

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