Image: Allan McCollum
Galerie Thomas Schulte is presenting 'A Moment in Time: Drawings, 1991-1992', a solo exhibition by Allan McCollum at its Potsdamer Strasse space in Berlin. Running from July 4 to August 15, 2026, the show brings together nine 'Collections of Drawings' totaling 570 individual works from McCollum’s long-running 'Drawings' series.
The exhibition coincides with the gallery’s 35th anniversary and is devoted to an artist the gallery has represented since its founding in 1991. According to the gallery, McCollum has also profoundly shaped its conceptual program over that period. The presentation therefore links a substantial body of historical work with the institution’s own timeline, while focusing on a series that has remained central to McCollum’s practice.
McCollum began the 'Drawings' series in 1988, and the gallery describes it as his only body of work made with a traditional medium: pencil on paper. The works shown in Berlin use black abstract forms on white backgrounds and were developed from only two graphic elements, 90-degree arcs and straight lines. McCollum created hundreds of plastic templates from these components and combined them through a numerical system to ensure that no two forms were exactly alike.
The gallery’s text places the series within McCollum’s broader investigation of systems of repetition, reproduction and proliferation, and more specifically within his interest in the relationship between serial production and the formation of meaning and value. Across his practice since the 1970s, McCollum has repeatedly worked in what the gallery calls 'Collections'—assemblages of photographs, sculptural objects or drawings that can range from a few elements to thousands. Here, the tension between the serial and the singular is built directly into the presentation of the drawings themselves.
Installed across the gallery walls, the framed works appear in what the gallery describes as an almost overwhelming density. The display recalls a portrait hall or family photograph arrangement, while the underlying inspiration comes from McCollum’s interest in heraldry and in how symbols can create both identification and collective belonging. The gallery says the artist’s question in this body of work is whether a set of symbols could exist that stands for unity and diversity at the same time.
The show also underscores the handmade character of the series. After the template-based forms were selected, each one was traced and filled in by hand using graphite pencil on museum board. The gallery notes that the works in the exhibition were made between 1988 and 1992 and includes examples such as 'Collection of Sixty Drawings', 'Collection of Ninety Drawings' and 'Collection of Thirty Drawings', all presented as unique works in blonde frames.
'A Moment in Time: Drawings, 1991-1992' is on view at Galerie Thomas Schulte Potsdamer Strasse, Mercator Höfe, Potsdamer Strasse 81B, Berlin, through August 15, 2026.
