Press release

Allan McCollum, born in Los Angeles in 1944, is a conceptual artist. During the late 1970s, McCollum began to develop his central thesis; one which transforms the relationship between viewer and artwork, by challenging the producer/receiver dichotomy. His work is defined by his artistic and sociological investigation of the individual within processes of mass production. To that extent, McCollum‘s works are often characterized by an extreme accumulation of individual parts—drawings or sculptural objects—with the aim of transcending such social categorizations as education and class which often divide audiences in their reception. 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 most acclaimed works include his Plaster Surrogates, Perfect Vehicles, and his Over Ten Thousand Individual Works series, all of which have become icons of late 20th century conceptual art.