Allan McCollum
 Visiting Associate Professor
Link: About the artist

Contact Info
MIT Visual Arts Program
265 Massachusetts Avenue
Room: N51-315h
Cambridge, MA 02139
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Related Links
http://home.att.net/~allanmcnyc


Selection of Photos
Click on individual images to see more

 



  Allan McCollum.
Constructed Paintings.
1970-71.
Canvas, dye and caulking.
The paintings are unstretched, made from strips of canvas, pieced together and attached with rubberized caulking, and stapled directly to the wall.




  Allan McCollum.
Untitled Paper Construction.
1975.
Watercolor on paper.
16 x 24 inches.
The Untitled Paper Constructions are pieced together from sixteen basic shapes that the artist had commercially printed on Bristol drawing paper. Each shape is torn out by hand and covered with pencil or paint; the shapes may be pieced together indefinitely to form an indefinite amount different paintings and drawings of an indefinite amount of different sizes.




 
Allan McCollum.
Surrogate Painting [No. 783].
1978.
6 1/16 x 5 9/16 x 1 1/8 inches.
Acrylic on wood and museum board.




 
Allan McCollum.
Glossies.
1980.
A pile of imitation 'snapshots', handmade with inks and watercolors on paper, with self-adhesive plastic laminating film.
Acrylic on wood and museum board.



 
Allan McCollum.
Plaster Surrogates.
1982/84.
Enamel on cast Hydrostone.
Acrylic on wood and museum board.



 
Allan McCollum.
Perpetual Photo.
1982-90.
Sepia-tone black-and-white photograph, one of a series of unique prints.
45 x 60 x inches, framed.
1982/90.
Acrylic on wood and museum board.



 
Allan McCollum (in collaboration with Louise Lawler.
Ideal Settings:
For Presentation and Display
1982-83.
Around one hundred objects, wax and shoe polish on cast pigmented Hydrostone, 9 x 9 x 21/4 inches each. Installation designed by McCollum and Lawler, with theatrical lighting and sales price projected on wall.



 
Allan McCollum (in collaboration with Louise Lawler.
Fixed Intervals
1984-96.
Pictured: Lacquer on cut brass, 6 x 4 inches, 1996. Based on their 1984 series of the same name. One of a series of objects to be used to replace missing artworks.



 
Allan McCollum.
Perfect Vehicles.
1985.
Acrylic paints on cast Hydrocal.
19 x 9 x 81/2 inches each.



 
Allan McCollum (in collaboration with Laurie Simmons).
Actual Photos.
1985.
Cibachrome prints, 10 x 8 inches each.
A collection of around fifty images of tiny human figures used for model train layouts, photographed unaltered through a microscope. Approximate actual size of each head: 1-2 millimeters.



 
Allan McCollum.
Perfect Vehicles.
1988.
Acrylic latex on cast glass-fiber-reinforced concrete.
80 inches high each.
Installation: Venice Biennale Aperto, 1988.



  Allan McCollum.
Over Ten Thousand Individual Works.
1987/88.
Enamel on cast Hydrocal.
2 inches in diameter, lengths variable, each unique.
To produce the Individual Works, hundreds of small shapes were collected from friends' homes, supermarkets, hardware stores, and sidewalks: bottle caps, jar lids, drawer pulls, salt shakers, flashlights, measuring spoons, cosmetic containers, yogurt cups, earrings, push buttons, candy molds, garden hose connectors, paperweights, shade pulls, Chinese teacups, cat toys, pencil sharpeners, and so on. Rubber molds were created from these shapes to produce a vocabulary of forms that could be combined in hundreds of thousands of different ways. An arithmetic system was used to insure that no two Individual Works would be alike.



 
Allan McCollum.
Drawings,
1989-93.
Pencil on museum board, each unique. Installation: Centre d' Art Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland, 1993.



 
Allan McCollum.
Lost Objects,
1991.
Enamel on glass-fiber-reinforced concrete.
Cast dinosaur bones produced in collaboration with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.



  Allan McCollum.
The Dog From Pompei.
1991.
Cast glass-fiber-reinforced Hydrocal.
Approximately 21 x 21 x 21 inches.
Replicas made from a mold taken from the famous original "chained dog" plaster cast of a dog smothered in ash from the explosion of Mount Vesuvius, in ancient Pompeii, in 79 A.D. Produced in collaboration with the Museo Vesuviano and the Pompei Tourist Board, Pompei, Italy, and Studio Trisorio, Naples, Italy.



  Allan McCollum.
Natural Copies from the Coal Mines of Central Utah.
1994/95.
Enamel paint on cast polymer-
enhanced Hydrocal.
30 x 30 x 30 inches each.
Natural dinosaur track cast replicas produced in collaboration with the College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum, Price, Carbon County, Utah. Installation: Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York.



  Allan McCollum.
THE EVENT: Petrified Lightning from Central Florida (with Supplemental Didactics).
1997.
Actual lightning strike that created a fulgurite, triggered by the artist and the crew at the International Center for Lightning Research and Testing at Camp Blanding, Florida. Single 16mm film frame, shot at 500 frames per second.



  Allan McCollum.
Fulgurite
1997
Fused zircon sand.
The fulgurite produced by the artist artificially triggering a natural lightning bolt with a small rocket, accomplished in collaboration with the International Center for Lightning Research and Testing at Camp Blanding, Florida.



  Allan McCollum.
THE EVENT: Petrified Lightning from Central Florida (with Supplemental Didactics).
1997.
Over 10,000 fulgurite replicas. Cast epoxy and zircon sand. Replicas cast from the original fulgurite produced by the artist. Installation: The University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, Florida.



  Allan McCollum.
Parable
1998-1999.
Cast pigmented concrete. From a series of twelve replicas cast from the stump of an elm tree that succumbed to the Dutch elm disease on the grounds of the Wanås Sculpture Park, Knislinge, Sweden, in 1998.



  Allan McCollum.
The Visible Markers
1997-2000.
A continuing series of multiples in different sizes and shapes designed for use in expressing gratitude. Shown: Visible Markers in Twelve Exciting Colors, 2000; published by IC Editions, New York.



  Allan McCollum.
The Small World Drawings
2000.
Pencil drawings on rag paper, 4" x 6" each. All the given names from a particular community are grouped into all the possible pairings, each pairing drawn by the artist in block lettering, with a "plus" sign between. Pictured: one of one thousand drawings derived from a single postal zip code from the mailing list of the Barbara Krakow Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts.



  Allan McCollum.
Mount Signal and its Sand Spikes: A Project for the Imperial Valley
2000.
An inSITE 2000 Project, installed at the University Gallery, San Diego State University, San Diego, California. Enlarged 'Sand Spike' model and souvenir replicas produced in collaboration with the Imperial Valley Historical Society Pioneer Museum, Imperial, California, from an actual Mount Signal sand spike concretion in their collection, and exhibited along with over 50 paintings, drawings, and photographs of the mountain by local artists from California and Baja California.



  Allan McCollum.
Mount Signal and its Sand Spikes: A Project for the Imperial Valley
2000.
An inSITE 2000 Project, installed at the University Gallery, San Diego State University, San Diego, California. Mountain model produced in collaboration with El Museo Universitario de la Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Mexicali, Mexico, and exhibited along with over 50 paintings, drawings, and photographs of the mountain by local artists from California and Baja California.



  Allan McCollum.
Allégories
2000.
Stone, polyester resin, pigment.
Five new copies of five deteriorated and mutilated 18th century statues from the grounds of the abandoned Château Bonnier de la Mosson, Montpellier, France, installed at the site of Le Corum, the city of Montpellier's new cultural center. For the City of Montpellier.



  Allan McCollum.
The New City Markers
2000-2001
A public project for the City of Malmö in Sweden. Over 1000 unique shapes were cut from aluminum, to be attached to the outsides of all the new buildings and to be mounted over all the front doors of all the new apartments that were planned to open in 2001 in the "Bo01 City of Tomorrow," one of the city's new urban centers.



  Allan McCollum.
Topographical Models of the States of Kansas and Missouri.
2003.
Cast Hydrostone, painted with white primer.
Kansas: 4 x 11 x 27 inches;
Missouri: 3 x 23 x 17 inches.
120 of these models were made during the summer of 2003 to be donated to regional historical society museums throughout the state of Kansas and Missouri. The museums were invited to paint the models according to their own needs. The models were delivered to the museums by the artist personally, using a rented van. Produced in collaboration with Grandarts Gallery, in Kansas City, Missouri.



  Allan McCollum.
Each and Every One of You
2004.
Digital prints, on rag paper.
4 x 6 inches each
(Framed: 9 x 10-1/2 inches)
A portfolio of 1200 prints: the 600 most common female names and the 600 most common male names, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's most recent compilation of common names used in the U.S., ordered according to popularity of use. Three of the portfolios were published by Graphicstudio, in Tampa Florida.
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