ALLAN MCCOLLUM
MINIME VARIAZIONI. Drawings and Plaster Surrogates
18 January - 29 March, 2024
ALLAN MCCOLLUM
MINIME VARIAZIONI. Drawings and Plaster Surrogates
18 January - 29 March, 2024
Text
Galleria Fumagalli presents its first solo exhibition of American master Allan McCollum (Los Angeles, 1944) from 18 January to 29 March, 2024. Allan McCollum, one of the most original and influential American Conceptual artists, will be in Milan for a museum-like exhibition: a project specifically conceived for the main room of the gallery, consisting of 660 elements created between 1988 and 1992, which will form a single large installation: Collection of Drawings.
The work reflects the artist’s fifty-year research which takes the form of “collections” of works – drawings or sculptures, from a few elements to several thousand – apparently mass-produced, yet characterized by subtle and minimal variations in shape and color that distinguish the single from the “mass”.
Since the 1970s, Allan McCollum has been questioning the dichotomy between hand-made production of unique works and mass production, and between the artistic research of the individual and the viewers traditionally seen as a nameless crowd. He proposes to subvert those criteria and create new identifications for viewers as opposed to traditional art valuations of producer and receiver – usually assessed by education and class. Due to its focus on the processes of cultural reception, McCollum’s work has often been set in the context of his contemporaries Michael Asher, Daniel Buren, Andrea Fraser, Louise Lawler, and Allan Ruppersberg.
Allan McCollum lives and works in New York where he moved in 1975 from his hometown, Los Angeles.
Emblematic of his continuing activity are these bodies of work: Surrogate Paintings begun in 1978, Plaster Surrogates emerged in 1982 and Drawings from 1988.
He took part in the Whitney Biennial of 1975 and the Venice Biennials of 1988 and 2012. His works are part of the collections of over seventy among the most prestigious museums worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris; the MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the MAMCO in Geneva; the Rivoli Castle in Turin.
Text
Galleria Fumagalli presents its first solo exhibition of American master Allan McCollum (Los Angeles, 1944) from 18 January to 29 March, 2024. Allan McCollum, one of the most original and influential American Conceptual artists, will be in Milan for a museum-like exhibition: a project specifically conceived for the main room of the gallery, consisting of 660 elements created between 1988 and 1992, which will form a single large installation: Collection of Drawings.
The work reflects the artist’s fifty-year research which takes the form of “collections” of works – drawings or sculptures, from a few elements to several thousand – apparently mass-produced, yet characterized by subtle and minimal variations in shape and color that distinguish the single from the “mass”.
Since the 1970s, Allan McCollum has been questioning the dichotomy between hand-made production of unique works and mass production, and between the artistic research of the individual and the viewers traditionally seen as a nameless crowd. He proposes to subvert those criteria and create new identifications for viewers as opposed to traditional art valuations of producer and receiver – usually assessed by education and class. Due to its focus on the processes of cultural reception, McCollum’s work has often been set in the context of his contemporaries Michael Asher, Daniel Buren, Andrea Fraser, Louise Lawler, and Allan Ruppersberg.
Allan McCollum lives and works in New York where he moved in 1975 from his hometown, Los Angeles.
Emblematic of his continuing activity are these bodies of work: Surrogate Paintings begun in 1978, Plaster Surrogates emerged in 1982 and Drawings from 1988.
He took part in the Whitney Biennial of 1975 and the Venice Biennials of 1988 and 2012. His works are part of the collections of over seventy among the most prestigious museums worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris; the MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the MAMCO in Geneva; the Rivoli Castle in Turin.
Installation views
Installation views
Press
Selected press
Press
Selected press
Video
Video