This publication brings together, for the first time, one Bleach Painting, five Constructed Paintings and a number of late 1960s pieces ail of which presage McCollum's future work as much as they suggest the nature of his artistic practice at the outset of his career. As a complement to the show, reproduced in the pages of the catalogue, you will find thirteen works from this period-many juxtaposed with fine detail shots-ail painting to Allan's early interest in defining what a painting is by reducing it to its essential terms.
In her essay, “Allan McCollum's Unstretched Canvases” at the beginning of the book, Meredith Malone states that Allan's “earliest paintings represent a vital transitional moment for the artist, linking him to the formalist dialogues of the 1950s and 1960s while anticipating his growing preoccupation with issues of serial production and strategies of display evinced in his Surrogates and beyond. At the same time these canvases offer intriguing perspectives on the dominant discourses surrounding abstract painting in the beginning of the 1970s and McCollum's aspiration to test and strain them.” Archival images, many taken in and around Allan's Santa Monica studio in the 1970s, shed light not only on Allan's process, but also on the lasting place of these works in the artist's oeuvre.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition, Petzel, New York, from March 2 to April 29, 2017.
Hardcover
8 x 11 inches
44 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9863230-9-6