ALLAN McCOLLUM | Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles

September 9 - October 21, 2017

VIEW EXHIBITION

In the Waiting Room, Allan McCollum will present 180 postcard-sized, framed photographs, each depicting a particular moment of small-screen emotional support. While viewing movies and television shows on his laptop with the subtitles turned on, McCollum shot a photograph every time variations of the phrase “You’ll be ok” would come across the screen. Having amassed hundreds of these unique images, McCollum’s Waiting Room installation contains a precise selection systematically and ostensibly arranged to construct a theatrical setting of wishfulness and hopefulness, where the wishes and hopes could just as easily arouse fear and doubt at the same time. 

Allan McCollum was born 1944, in Los Angeles, California. He has had over 100 solo exhibitions in the United States and Europe, including retrospectives at the Sprengel Museum (Hannover, Germany); the Serpentine Gallery (London); and the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, The Netherlands). A recipient of an NEA Special Project Grant and an Individual Support Grant from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, writings on McCollum’s work have been published in many magazines, including Artforum, Art in America, Artnews, The New York Times, Flash Art, Sculpture Magazine, and a number of other published interviews and books. His works are held in over seventy art museum collections, including the The Museum of Modern Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; 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 DC.