Mark Allen

Mark Allen is an artist, educator and curator based in Los Angeles. He is the founder and executive director of Machine Project, a non-profit performance and installation space investigating art, technology, natural history, science, music, literature, and food in an informal storefront in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. Machine Project also operates as an informal team of artists who collaborate to present work at locations ranging from beaches to museums to parking lots. Under his direction, Machine has produced shows with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum at UCLA, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, the Contemporary Art Museum St Louis, and the Walker Museum in Minneapolis. He has produced over 1,000 events in Los Angeles at the Machine Project storefront space.

Teaching Philosophy

1. Art is a space in culture for thinking about ideas.
2. Art is not defined by materials or means of production but the context in which it appears, discussed and analyzed.
3. Art is a great excuse to do stuff you want to do.
4. Great ideas show up every day, there's no reason to be stingy with them.
5. Thinking happens with other people.
6. There is nothing wrong with creating beautiful things but there is something depressing about making unique collectables for the wealthy.
7. Interesting human beings can sustain multiple contradictory belief systems without dying from cognitive dissonance.
8. Your friends are your first and best audience.
9. Small, grassroots, and intimate is better than large, corporate, and formal.
10. Successful artists are empathic and can imagine themselves as the audience of their own work.

Allen, Mark. Machine Project: The Platinum Collection. Saratoga Springs, Tang Publications Spring 2016. Monograph.

Allen, Mark. “Notes Toward Socratic Gardening.” In the Canyon, Revise the Canon — Utopian Knowledge, Radical Pedagogy and Artist-run Community Art Spaces in Southern California. Ed. Géraldine Gourbe. Rennes: Shelter Press, 2015. 81-85. Print

Allen, Mark. Machine Project Hammer Museum Public Engagement Artist in Residence Report. Los Angeles, Machine Project Press. 2013

Allen, Mark. Machine Project: A Field Guide to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Los Angeles, Machine Project Press. 2009

Featured Exhibits

Machine Project: The Platinum Collection (Live By Special Request), The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, 2015

Machine Project at the Border, Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, 2014

The Machine Project Field Guide to L.A. Architecture, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA, 2013

Paris at Your Home!, Mains d’œuvres, Paris, France, 2013

Intimate Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 2012

Open Field, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN 2011

The Artist’s Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, 2010

The Front Room, Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO, 2010

A Machine Project Field Guide to LACMA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA , 2008