Mark Flores is an artist born in Ventura, CA in 1965. He received a BA from UCLA in 1999 and an MFA from Cal Arts in 2002. Flores has had solo exhibitions at UCLA Hammer Museum; Alison Jacques Gallery, London; Cardi Black Box, Milan; and David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles. His work has been included in group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; California State University, Los Angeles; Vox Populi, Philadelphia; and the Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University, Orange, CA. He has recently had two-person exhibitions with his partner William E. Jones at Nothing Special, Los Angeles; and Private Places, Portland, OR. Reviews and articles about Flores’s work have appeared in Art in America, Artforum, Flash Art, the Los Angeles Times, Frieze and The New York Times. Flores has received a California Community Foundation Fellowship. He lives in Los Angeles.
Since the beginning of recorded time, the impulse towards the monumental has existed to inspire awe and terror. This course aims to consider past, current, and future problems and possibilities in upscaling visual art practices. The class will be hands on with a focus on (but not limited to) painting. We will consider methodologies, materials, presentation and practicalities. Artists and periods considered: Leonardo DaVinci, Michelangelo, Eugene Delacroix, Caspar David Friedrich, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, WPA murals, Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, Gutai, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Los Angeles Muralists, Judith Baca, Paul McCarthy, Katherina Grosse, Richard Wright, El Anatsui, Adam Pendleton and Lauren Halsey. Readings: Kant, Burke, Farmer, Fried, Haraway, Lovecraft. Videos: Bruce Conner’s The White Rose (Jay DeFeo), Jackson Pollock in the Studio, Eames Studio, Powers of Ten, Godzilla.
