KIPNZ is pleased to present An Ongoing Collection of Screen Grabs With Reassuring Subtitles, by Allan McCollum. 

Allan McCollum is a seminal artist with work spanning over five decades. Born in Los Angeles and later moving to New York, McCollum’s work is an ongoing exchange between the fetish and value of unique objects in contrast to the potential and scale of mechanical mass production. 

Often working in labor-intensive projects, McCollum’s works engage both the unique and the repeatable simultaneously. Setting a series of parallel guidelines—the first allowing for an appearingly endless production of similar objects and the second altering the production line with slight, never-repeating variations—unique objects are produced in extreme, similar-appearing volumes. 

Beginning in 2015, McCollum began collecting screenshots of movies and television shows in moments where reassuring dialogue is spoken between characters. Meticulously capturing a screenshot when phrases like “everything’s going to be okay” and “you’ll be fine” appear on the screen, the language and image become one. 

To date, McCollum has collected 1,400 screenshots which are presented as a digital slideshow. As the slideshow progresses, the volume of reassuring sentiment can at times produce an unsettling doubt—will everything truly be okay or can we only believe everything will be okay?

The full slideshow of 1,400 screenshots can be seen on view at KIPNZ and on the artist’s website.

Editioned prints of these images are available in sets of twelve (4x6 inches each) and can be seen at KIPNZ and digitally here.

For inquiries please contact Kenneth Pietrobono and Natalie Zayne at info@kipnz.com.