Allan McCollum

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Allan McCollum
Los Angeles, California
NationalityAmerican
Known forSculpture, Conceptual art

Allan McCollum (born 1944) is a contemporary American artist who lives and works in New York City. In 1975, his work was included in the Whitney Biennial, and he moved to New York City the same year. In the late 1970s he became especially well known for his series, Surrogate Paintings.

He has spent over fifty years exploring how objects achieve public and personal meaning in a world caught up in the contradictions made between unique handmade artworks and objects of mass production, and in the early 1990s, he began focusing most on collaborations with small regional communities and historical society museums in different parts of the world.[1] His first solo exhibition was in 1970 and his first New York showing was in a group exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery in 1972.[2]

Early life

McCollum was born in

cartographer, also performed regularly as an actress and singer in local theater productions, and as a piano accompanist to a local voice teacher. His mother's brother, Sam Hinton, was a well-known folk singer and folk music historian in Southern California, and his mother's sister's husband was Jon Gnagy, the popular television art instructor who between 1946 and 1970 had the longest continuously running show on television.[3][4]

Education and early career

If Love Had Wings: A Perpetual Canon, 1972

In 1964, McCollum moved to

Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.[6] In late 1975, he moved to the SoHo district of New York City, where he initially worked as a guard at the Whitney Museum.[7]

Exhibition history

Perfect Vehicles, 1988. Installation: Venice Biennale Aperto, 1988

McCollum has had over 140 solo exhibitions, including retrospectives at the

Serpentine Gallery in London (1990); the Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art in Malmo, Sweden (1990), IVAM Centre del Carme in Valencia, Spain (1990); Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, The Netherlands (1989) and Portikus
in Frankfurt, Germany (1988).

He participated in the Aperto at the

Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the National Gallery of Art
in Washington D.C.

Artwork

Over Ten Thousand Individual Works, (detail) 1987/91.

McCollum's family history, his experiences and training at working in industrial kitchens, and his interest in theater and Fluxus, including "task-oriented" performance art, offered him a unique take on labor and art, and the methods and systems of quantity-production showed themselves in his artwork from the beginning. He is known for utilizing the methods of

combinatorial
protocol that never repeated itself.

Mount Signal and Its Sand Spikes, 1999/2000

Beginning in the early 1990s, McCollum expanded his interests in quantity production to include explorations into the ways regional communities give meaning to local landmarks and geological oddities in establishing community identity, and collaborated with a number of small towns and small historical museums in Europe and the United States, bringing attention to the way local narratives develop around objects peculiar to geographic regions, and drawing comparisons to the way artworks develop meaning in a parallel manner. Often these projects involved reproducing local objects in quantity, or creating models or copies of local artifacts and symbols. In 1995, he collaborated with the

Mount Signal, and the unique "Sand Spike" sand concretions found at its base. In 2003, he created 120 topographical models of the states of Missouri and Kansas
, which he donated and delivered himself to 120 small historical society museums in both states.

Monoprints from The Shapes Project, 2005/05.

In 2005, McCollum designed

hardwoods, metals, rubber and fabric, in a variety of sizes. In 2010, he published The Book of Shapes, in collaboration with mfc-michèle didier.[10] This book makes the Shapes Project complete. The first volume contains the 300 shapes "parts" and the second includes the guides and instructions for creating all possible combinations with these components. The same year, he organized the Shapes for Hamilton project, in which a unique signed and dated Shapes print was made for each of the 6,000+ residents of the township of Hamilton, New York.[11]

He has been a recipient of an NEA Special Project Grant and an Individual Support Grant from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation.

Collaborations and writings

McCollum has occasionally collaborated with other artists in producing projects, including Louise Lawler (1983, 1984, 1988, 1996), Andrea Fraser (1991), Laurie Simmons (1984), Matt Mullican (2004), Andrea Zittel (2007), Allen Ruppersberg (2008), Pablo Helguera (2014), Astrid Preston and Cynthia Daignault (2016). He has also written texts and interviewed fellow artists for books and catalogs, including Matt Mullican (1979 and 2006)[12] Allen Ruppersberg (1999),[13] Andrea Zittel (2001),[14] Roxy Paine (2002),[15] and Harrell Fletcher (2005).[16]

References

  1. ^ Anastas, Rhea: "Allan McCollum: The Kansas and Missouri Topographical Model Project", Grand Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, 2003.
  2. ^ "Young Los Angeles Artists", Sidney Janis Gallery, 1972. Essay by Maurice Tuchman and Jane Livingston.
  3. Art and Antiques
    , May 7, 1991.
  4. ^ Enright, Robert: "No Things But in Ideas: an interview with Allan McCollum", Border Crossings, September 2001.
  5. ^ Virtual Venice, Venice Artist Roster
  6. ^ Whitney Biennial 1975 [1]
  7. ^ McCollum, A. (1999), The Museum Of Modern Art Oral History Program p. 21
  8. ^ Twentieth Century American Sculpture, Northeast Region - Exhibit IV, The White House Archived 2001-04-15 at the Wayback Machine
  9. ^ Princenthal, Nancy, "Shape Shifter", Art in America, February 2007, pp 106-109.
  10. ^ [2] mfc-michèle didier
  11. ^ Radio+Free Hamilton, "Shape Distribution Starts This Weekend", March 30, 2010.
  12. ^ "Matt Mullican's World", Matt Mullican: More Details from an Imaginary Universe, published by Hopefulmonster Editore, Torino, Italy, 2001. Reprint of 1979 essay of same name, published in REALLIFE, 1980.
    - "Matt Mullican in Discussion with Allan McCollum", Model Architecture, edited by Stella Rollig, with essay by Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen. Published by Hatje Cantz, Ostfirdern, Germany, 2006.
  13. ^ "Allen Ruppersberg: What One Loves about Life Are the Things That Fade", Allen Ruppersberg: Books, Inc. published by Fond Regional D'Art Contemporain du Limousin, France, 2001.
  14. ^ "Conversation with Andrea Zittel", Andrea Zittel: Diary #01, Tema Celeste Editions, Gabrius Spa, Milan, Italy, 2002.
  15. ^ "Conversation between Allan McCollum and Roxy Paine", Roxy Paine/Bluff, published by the Public Art Fund, New York City. 2004.
  16. ^ "Harrell Fletcher, interviewed by Allan McCollum", Harrell Fletcher: Where I Lived, and What I Lived For, texts by Miranda July, Allan McCollum, Byron Kim, Jesse Parks Hilliard, Chris Johanson, Harrell Fletcher and Frederick Paul. Domaine De Kerguehennec, 2008.

Bibliography

  • Nicolas Bourriaud, "McCollum's Aura", New Art International, October 1988.
  • Lynne Cooke, Selma Klein-Essink and Anne Rorimer, Allan McCollum, Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands, 1989; in Dutch and English.
  • Hal Foster, "Subversive Signs", Recoding: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics, Seattle Bay Press, 1986.
  • Andrea Fraser, König, Kasper and Wilmes, Ulrich: Allan McCollum, Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany. Published by Walther König, Cologne, West Germany, 1988; in German and English.
  • Yve-alain Bois
    , Formless: A User's Guide, Zone Books, New York 1997.
  • Craig Owens, "Allan McCollum: Repetition & Difference", Art in America, September 1983.

External links


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