Tomorrow from 4-7 pm, YU Contemporary is hosting their closing event for Selections from the PCVA Archive— the first in a series of preview exhibitions at the new, labyrinthine, Southeast art center (for more on this exhibit and the space, see the story I wrote a few months back on YU and their maiden, preview exhibit).

In short, Selections looks back through the programming and archival materials of the seminal Portland Center for the Visual Arts, which ran from 1971-1987— positioning this history as a model to which YU aspires.

For the show's closing event, YU has brought in Tom Marioni, the conceptualist rock star who founded and directed the Museum of Conceptual Art from 1970-1984 (and exhibited at PCVA back in 1977). For tomorrow's closing event, Marioni will perform his "art action," The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art— it's exactly what it sounds like— which he began hosting as a weekly shindig back in 1976 (and he's been at it ever since).

Selections' closing event is a multi-day affair, described by the press release like so:

At YU, Marioni will present two iterations of The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art. The first is a series of three evenings with invited guests and bartenders in West Coast, YU's subterranean social space. On Saturday July 30, a presentation of Drinking Beer with Friends... will be open to the public, and, like in other museum projects, the remaining empty beer bottles from the private gatherings will be put on display to serve as evidence of the previous evening's gatherings as part of Marioni's bar-like installation. For Marioni, Drinking Beer with Friends... serves less as a celebration, than as a way to, in his words, "observe real life and report on it poetically."

Sounds like tomorrow's attendees might find one hungover Maroini. Regardless, tickets for the public portion of the event, sold on a sliding donation scale, can be purchased here. (YU is located at 800 SE 10th Ave, across the street from Holocene.)

Alright, it's Friday. I'm gonna go have myself a few art actions.