Allan McCollum, “Surrogate Paintings” & “Plaster Surrogates”
I had the privilege of seeing Allan McCollum in conversation with art historian Miwon Kwon at the Hammer last year in conjunction with the exhibition Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology. I think McCollum’s work is just so generous, so human, so democratic, so unpretentious. He doesn’t fetishize his objects. He works with communities and gives to them, freely. And in his conversation with Miwon Kwon, he totally resisted theorizing his own work, which was awesome.
As someone who was obsessed with medieval technologies of reproduction (pilgrim badges, specifically), I laughed out loud when I first encountered his work in Take It or Leave It.
He has complicated my thinking about mass production and unique objects more than any other thinker or writer (pace Walter Benjamin). And he’s so nice, to boot!
mindful museums 