'Now it is probably evident in my work that I suffer some preoccupation with absence, and with death, and with how the objects we produce and the objects we collect work to defer our knowledge of death, displace our fears of it and so forth. All artists know how every symbolic object exists in some way to re-present that which is not present, that which is absent, that which is gone, that which is beyond recall. And I think that making as many molds and casts as I’ve made has worked symbolically for me as a kind of attempt to master my own apprehensions about death and absence. I’ve come to feel that a cast object quite automatically functions as a symbol for an absent original model, for instance, in a way that is especially visceral' – Allan McCollum