Allan McCollum

 

Since the late 1960s, Allan McCollum has created works that examine the art object’s relationship to uniqueness, context, and value, while blurring the boundary between unique artifacts and mass production. His Surrogate Paintings—sculptures he makes from plaster, rubber and cement to resemble framed canvases—are uniquely produced yet are intended to appear manufactured, questioning both the process of labor and the value of authorship. These and other serial artworks by the American artist repeatedly mine the tension between repetition and uniqueness that is so characteristic of the age of mass production.

In 2015, the artist began collecting images for an 'anthropological project' he titled An Ongoing Collection of Screen Grabs with Reassuring Subtitles. A group of 1200 screenshots the artist has culled from American TV series and movies like “The X-Files” and “The Irishman,” they reproduce closed-captioned images featuring characters offering assembly line emotional support. Among the phrases McCollum has captured and has later transferred onto canvas panels are: “You’re safe now,” “Don’t worry, it’s gonna be all right,” “You have nothing to worry about,” and “You’re ok, all right?”

According to MoMA Senior Curator Roxana Marcoci, McCollum’s project was spurred by his interest in Vladimir Propp’s The Morphology of the Folktale (1928), which focuses on the structural narrative of folktales, with their common “happy ending.” In a recent email exchange with McCollum, the curator recorded the artist saying the following: “Our understanding of the world is inseparable from the stories that surround us as we live our lives… I like this quote from Muriel Rukeyser: ‘The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms.’”

— CVF, USFCAM

 

Allan McCollum, An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles – ok617 (2015-...). Print on canvas, mounted on stretcher, framed. 10-1/3 x 17-1/4 x 1-1/2 in (26.3 x 43.8 x 4 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte.

 
 

“All the screenshots from films and movies amassed by [me] depict people in situations of great uncertainty and distress being comforted with words of support spelled out in the subtitles. But while anxiety and worry are feelings that are individually and subjectively felt by all of us, the encouraging phrases, which are frequently used in the films, through endless repetition soon become meaningless.”

— Allan McCollum

 
 

Allan McCollum, An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles – ok626 (2015-...). Print on canvas, mounted on stretcher, framed. 10-1/3 x 17-1/4 x 1-1/2 in (26.3 x 43.8 x 4 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte.

Allan McCollum, An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles – ok653 (2015-...). Print on canvas, mounted on stretcher, framed. 10-1/3 x 17-1/4 x 1-1/2 in (26.3 x 43.8 x 4 cm). Private Collection. Image courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte.

 

Allan McCollum, An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles – ok695 (2015-...). Print on canvas, mounted on stretcher, framed. 10-1/3 x 17-1/4 x 1-1/2 in (26.3 x 43.8 x 4 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte.

Allan McCollum, An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles – ok719 (2015-...). Print on canvas, mounted on stretcher, framed. 10-1/3 x 17-1/4 x 1-1/2 in (26.3 x 43.8 x 4 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte.

 

Allan McCollum, An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles – ok920 (2015-...). Print on canvas, mounted on stretcher, framed. 10-1/3 x 17-1/4 x 1-1/2 in (26.3 x 43.8 x 4 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte.

Allan McCollum, An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles – ok934 (2015-...). Print on canvas, mounted on stretcher, framed. 10-1/3 x 17-1/4 x 1-1/2 in (26.3 x 43.8 x 4 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte.

 

Allan McCollum, An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles – ok957 (2015-...). Print on canvas, mounted on stretcher, framed. 10-1/3 x 17-1/4 x 1-1/2 in (26.3 x 43.8 x 4 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte.

Allan McCollum, An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles – ok967 (2015-...). Print on canvas, mounted on stretcher, framed. 10-1/3 x 17-1/4 x 1-1/2 in (26.3 x 43.8 x 4 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte.

 

Allan McCollum, An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles – ok973 (2015-...). Print on canvas, mounted on stretcher, framed. 10-1/3 x 17-1/4 x 1-1/2 in (26.3 x 43.8 x 4 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte.

Allan McCollum, An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles – ok1027 (2015-...). Print on canvas, mounted on stretcher, framed. 10-1/3 x 17-1/4 x 1-1/2 in (26.3 x 43.8 x 4 cm). Private Collection. Image courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte.

 

Allan McCollum, An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles – ok1120 (2015-...). Print on canvas, mounted on stretcher, framed. 10-1/3 x 17-1/4 x 1-1/2 in (26.3 x 43.8 x 4 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte.

Allan McCollum, An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles – ok1126 (2015-...). Print on canvas, mounted on stretcher, framed. 10-1/3 x 17-1/4 x 1-1/2 in (26.3 x 43.8 x 4 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte.

 

Allan McCollum, An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles - ok1131 (2015-...). Print on canvas, mounted on stretcher, framed. 10-1/3 x 17-1/4 x 1-1/2 in (26.3 x 43.8 x 4 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte.

Allan McCollum, An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles - ok1154 (2015-...). Print on canvas, mounted on stretcher, framed. 10-1/3 x 17-1/4 x 1-1/2 in (26.3 x 43.8 x 4 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte.

 

Allan McCollum, An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles - ok1178 (2015-...). Print on canvas, mounted on stretcher, framed. 10-1/3 x 17-1/4 x 1-1/2 in (26.3 x 43.8 x 4 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte.

 
Artist Allan McCollum.

Artist Allan McCollum.

About Allan McCollum

(Los Angeles, CA, 1944)

He lives and works in New York.

Allan McCollum is an internationally acclaimed conceptual artist whose career began in the late 1960s. Aspects of identity and the relationship between the individual and mass culture are at the heart of many of his works. He has, over the span of his career, carried out numerous projects involving individuals and craftsmen across towns and communities in the US, taking a special interest in common, everyday life, popular culture, as well as processes of mass production. Works by McCollum are held in the public collections of, among other institutions, The National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), MoMA (NYC), The New Museum of Contemporary Art (NYC), The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago), The Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA), The USF Contemporary Art Museum (Tampa, FL), Musée National d’Art Moderne (Paris), Israel Museum (Jerusalem), National Museum of Contemporary Art (Seoul, Korea), and New Tokyo Metropolitan Museum (Japan).

Artist website: allanmccollum.net

Artist Facebook: @allan.mccollum

Gallery website: galeriethomasschulte.de

Gallery website: petzel.com

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Gallery website: galeriemitterrand.com

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