Beer. It’s the golden brew that serves as a relaxant for social situations and a receiver of ping-pong balls in drinking games. It can also serve as a work of social art.
The beverage takes center stage in San Francisco artist Tom Marioni’s exhibit, “The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art,” which is currently showing at the Hammer Museum.
“This month is the 40th anniversary of this work, and I’ve been doing it around the world but mostly, especially, in the last 10 or 15 years in other places,” Marioni said.
Marioni has been a leading figure in conceptual art since the 1960s, and he founded the Museum of Conceptual Art in San Francisco. Using his body to make art, Marioni has produced works that utilize physical action, using freehand to draw a circle and walking along a blank canvas, producing an undulating wave-like motion.
“I think that having conceptual artists make objects is helpful to showing the public that conceptual art is about ideas,” said Valerie Wade, director of the San Francisco art gallery Crown Point Press, which has prominently featured Marioni’s work since 1977. “The ideas are what motivate a choice of material. So having ephemeral pieces that don’t really document what happened is why he does the piece that he’s doing at the Hammer which is called social sculpture.”
The social sculpture, which will be displayed through Oct. 3, features a bar installation and an invitation-only beer salon that takes place every Wednesday. The exhibition also features a video of streaming beer, wall drawings and ephemera by the artist himself.
“He likes to think of these people who come to the beer salons as social works where people gather and things happen,” said Anne Ellegood, curator for the exhibit. “He’s very interested in … tracking what happens over time and tracking situations. There’s an element of chance itself in his work.”
Influenced by the Asian culture of San Francisco, the beer salon started out as an excuse to mingle and party but also took on a performative role of a tea ceremony, where the only beverages served are bottles of Pacifico beer, and the salon itself becomes a performance in which strangers socialize under a slow buzz of light alcohol.
“I do a beer salon every Wednesday in my studio as a kind of artist’s club, and people come and people bartend and they invite up to three of their friends and it has evolved over the years. People come and never come back, people who came years ago still come and then when I’m invited to do this work in lots of museums and countries, I meet new people,” Marioni said.
The social aspect of the exhibit was evident when more than 100 guests came to the first beer salon at the Hammer Museum on Sept. 1, where the varied crowds included artist Ed Ruscha, a friend of Marioni who was the bartender that night, and actor Will Ferrell.
The Wednesday night beer salons aren’t the average bar either, and invitations are sent to the artist’s friends, patrons and supporters of the Hammer Museum to come and take part in Marioni’s art piece.
“The reason the events are not public is that Tom never really wanted the piece for people to come to if they didn’t really understand what they were coming to,” Ellegood said.
On Sept. 28 at 7 p.m., Marioni will present his exhibit in an artist talk and performance as part of the Hammer Lecture series. The artist will also perform his 1996 composition, “Beer Drinking Sonata (for 13 players),” along with fellow artists and friends.
The exhibit is also open to the public during the regular hours of the Hammer, where they can view the remnants of the previous night’s beer salon.
“Sometimes people don’t understand that exactly, that the piece in the day is a leftover of the event. It’s kind of evidence that the events have occurred there. In a way, the gallery presentation is about the potential of the event,” Ellegood said.
Notably, the show takes place in the lobby of the Hammer, where oftentimes, up-and-coming artists show. While Marioni is not a newcomer in the art world, it is appropriate that his constantly evolving exhibit is shown as a new spectacle for the L.A. masses.
“Every time I do it, I get rediscovered,” Marioni said. “And I just keep getting rediscovered.”