Allan McCollum, Each and Every One of You, 2004. Digital prints, on cotton rag paper. You’re looking at a sea of marks and your very own mark in that sea.

	Name Game: In his new exhibit, Allan McCollum has framed prints of each of the 1200 most common first names in the country

Nearly everyone will have a personal response to Allan McCollum’s new installation at Barbara Krakow Gallery. His potent, fun, and daunting exhibition goes a step further than his last show there, in which he took names from the gallery’s mailing list and randomly paired them, making unexpected matches within a small community. [Boston Globe, 4/13/2000]

This time the community is much larger. In “Each and Every One of You,” the artist has made a framed print of each of the 1,200 most common first names in the country, according to the 2000 census. It’s the conceptual equivalent of work by artists who paint, draw, or sculpt with obsessive repetition, like Jacob El Hanani, who creates waves of motion with thousands of tiny graphite marks.

Such art makes a tension and a harmony between the individual increments and the whole. McCollum does that, and more. By using names, he personalizes the process. You're not just looking at a mark in a sea of marks; you're looking at your very own mark in that sea.

The 1,200 prints have overtaken the gallery. They run up and down the walls and around the reception area, and stand on long tables that fill the space. Everyone who goes in first seeks his or her own name. “I asked the installers, ‘Did you find your name?’” Krakow relates. “And their answers — it wasn’t ‘It’s over on that wall.’ It was ‘I’m number 22!’”

First we rank ourselves. Then we prowl about, catching sight of other familiar names, and making emotional and narrative riffs the way we might looking through a high school yearbook.

It was a task to install. Elements the viewer may not notice, like the angle of a print on its stand or its proximity to other prints, were exacting. McCollum has plotted out an environment austere in its regimentation and overwhelming in its numbers. The austerity offers up a structure to spark and contain the firestorm of associations and feelings that rises up. The numbers remind us of the sheer mass of people in this country. Yet the show will likely make almost every visitor, from James to Quinton, from Mary to Janine, feel anointed by the artist.

more pictures > > >