CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/10/2021

An important new survey on Allan McCollum

Featured spreads are from new release Allan McCollum: Works since 1969, published to accompany the first U.S. museum retrospective of the artist's work in fifty years, on view at ICA Miami earlier this year. Collecting early works, regional projects and the acclaimed series for which he is best known, it includes scholarship by Stephanie Seidel, Alex Kitnick, Jennifer Jane Marshall and ICA Miami Artistic Director Alex Gartenfeld, who writes, “The term ‘generic’ comes from the Latin-derived ‘genus,’ the classification of objects beyond species, and according to kind. And while as an adjective it can be used pejoratively, ‘generic’ might help us to understand Allan McCollum’s effort to group objects and to understand the nature of collections. The word might account for the extent to which McCollum’s iconic works are ingrained in the public consciousness. Indeed, the term ‘generic’ functions duly in McCollum’s work, expressing how his objects… are intended to stand in for any artwork. Viewed this way, McCollum’s work moved seamlessly, by the late 1980s, into objects outside the art world that accrue financial, symbolic or cultural value like art. McCollum’s work necessarily involves exploring how art functions in society, with the artist intuiting in the late 1960s that the gallery is a mere stage for artworks.”