Image: Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin
Galerie Thomas Schulte is showing Allan McCollum’s 'A Moment in Time: Drawings, 1991-1992' in Berlin through 15 August 2026, with the exhibition occupying the gallery’s Potsdamer Strasse space. The presentation brings together nine Collections of Drawings and comprises 570 individual works from McCollum’s long-running 'Drawings' series, one of the artist’s most emblematic bodies of work.
The exhibition arrives as the gallery marks its 35th anniversary and as McCollum continues a relationship with the gallery that began with its founding in 1991. According to the gallery, the Potsdamer Strasse venue has been dedicated to this historic work, underscoring the place McCollum’s practice has held within Galerie Thomas Schulte’s conceptual program. The gallery’s newsletter also lists the exhibition alongside Richard Deacon’s 'Just Looking' at its Charlottenstrasse location, separating the two current presentations across its Berlin spaces.
McCollum’s work has focused since the 1970s on processes of cultural reception and on the relationship between serially produced objects and the formation of meaning and value. The gallery describes his practice as examining how works can exist at the threshold between singular and multiple, individual and collective, legible and illegible. The 'Drawings' series, begun in 1988, is especially significant within that inquiry because it is the only body of work McCollum has made using a traditional artistic medium: pencil on paper.
The works in 'A Moment in Time: Drawings, 1991-1992' were created through a system built from just two graphic elements: 90-degree arcs and straight lines. McCollum designed hundreds of plastic templates from combinations of these components and used a numerical system to ensure that no two forms were exactly alike. Each shape was then traced and filled in by hand with graphite pencil on museum board, producing unique abstract emblems that are uniform in appearance but distinct on close inspection.
The gallery says the installation is arranged in an almost overwhelming density across the walls of the former apartment space, whose creaking floorboards and double-casement windows still retain a domestic character. In that setting, the framed drawings recall a portrait hall or a set of family photographs. McCollum’s stated interest in heraldry also informs the presentation: the gallery notes that his fascination with coats of arms and family histories helped shape the project, even as he pushed the logic of symbols toward a system that might stand for both unity and diversity.
The exhibition’s title points to the specific period of the works on view, while the gallery’s text connects the project to McCollum’s broader ambitions around identity and belonging. The 'Drawings' are presented as a model for producing a unique emblematic shape for each person on the planet, though the gallery emphasizes that the abundance of works can initially make singularity difficult to perceive. Only through close looking, it says, does each drawing’s individuality emerge. 'A Moment in Time: Drawings, 1991-1992' remains on view at Galerie Thomas Schulte, Potsdamer Strasse 81B, until 15 August 2026.
