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. His series Over 10,000 Individual Works (1987–88), exhibited in 1988 at John Weber Gallery, New York, included lines of combinations of found household objects, such as bottle caps and kitchen tools. Emblematic of his continuing activity are these bodies of work: Surrogate Paintings begun in 1978, Plaster Surrogates emerged in 1982 and Drawings from 1988.

Allan McCollum lives and works in New York where he moved in 1975 from his hometown, Los Angeles.
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.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

ALLAN MCCOLLUM
Minime Variazioni. Drawings and Plaster Surrogates

18 January – 29 March, 2024

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