Hard Edges for Hard Times: New Etchings by Tom Marioni
June 15 - September 1, 2023
Crown Point Press announces Hard Edges for Hard Times, an exhibition featuring five new etchings by Bay Area conceptual artist Tom Marioni. In reference to the new prints, Marioni wrote, “In the 1960s, there was a cultural revolution. Minimalism was the art of the time. It was based on hard-edge painting and sculpture. Today, in the 2020s, we are in another cultural revolution. Everyone is an artist, and hard edges are back.” Accompanying Marioni’s new prints is a selection of some of his earlier prints made at Crown Point.
Tom Marioni pioneered conceptual art on the West Coast and is an influential member of the movement worldwide. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1937, Marioni moved in 1959 to San Francisco where he still lives. Influenced by Joseph Beuys, John Cage, and Marcel Duchamp, Marioni was one of the first artists to identify performance as sculptural action, otherwise known as relational aesthetics or social art. In 1970 he founded the Museum of Conceptual Art (MOCA), which is the artist’s largest, most ambitious social artwork and possibly the first alternative art space in the country.