Presented by the Society of Art and Living Archives (SALA) in collaboration with Human Resources Los Angeles (HRLA), and in partnership with the Performance Art Museum (PAM), this program brought together a live performance and lecture by pioneering conceptual artist Tom Marioni, organized by SALA founder Alberto Cuadros.
A progenitor of West Coast conceptual art, Marioni revisited the ontological foundations of California's avant-garde through two seminal performance works: Out of Body Free Hand Circle (on prepared wall), a wall-based action rooted in Zen-inspired endurance and repetition, and One Second Sculpture (1969), his iconic "drawing in space." In the latter, the release of a coiled metal tape measure produced a fleeting convergence of sound, line, gravity, and gesture, transforming an instantaneous action into a sculptural event. Together, these performances demonstrated Marioni's enduring exploration of time, process, and the relationship between ephemeral action and material trace.
The program also reflected Marioni's longstanding influence on the Southern California conceptual art community. His history includes a solo exhibition at the Newport Harbor Art Museum (now the Orange County Museum of Art), a survey exhibition at the Hammer Museum, and participation in the landmark Out of Actions exhibition at MOCA Los Angeles. Throughout his career, Marioni has collaborated with and presented artists including Marina Abramović, Chris Burden, John Cage, Terry Fox, Paul Kos, Linda Montano, Bruce Nauman, and Barbara T. Smith. This presentation served as a live archival activation of one of the most transformative periods in the history of experimental art in California.
About the Artist
Tom Marioni (b. 1937, Cincinnati, Ohio) is a pioneering figure in American conceptual art and one of the principal architects of the West Coast's "social sculpture" movement. After relocating to San Francisco in 1959, he challenged conventional definitions of the art object by shifting attention from the production of static objects to the creation of idea-based situations and social encounters.
In 1970, Marioni founded the Museum of Conceptual Art (MOCA) in San Francisco, an influential artist-run institution that became a platform for performance, sound, conceptual, and body-based practices. Building on his earlier role as curator at the Richmond Art Center (1968–1971), he championed experimental work by artists including Chris Burden, Bruce Nauman, and Terry Fox.
Marioni is perhaps best known for his ongoing social artwork The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends Is the Highest Form of Art, first presented at the Oakland Museum in 1970. Framed as a recurring gathering in which conversation and social exchange become the artwork, the piece has been performed internationally and entered the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).
His work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Städtische Kunsthalle Mannheim. Marioni continues to live and work in San Francisco, where he leads the Society of Independent Artists and collaborates with Crown Point Press.