YEAR : 2004
MEASURES : w 44 cm x h 58 cm / w 58 cm x h 44 cm
PRINT : Lambda print
MOUNTING : Mounted between 5mm Forex and 5 mm acrylic.
EDITION : 3 editions, 1 artist proof
DOWNLOAD : Wgs.pdf / size 512 K
In the Autumn 2003 we made a trip through the USA. During a stop in Hendersonville, Tennessee, we got attracted to a building in a crossroads. It was an abandoned gas station which had been completely spraypainted white. The gas station was established as a hermetic plastic form. Instead of being a building constructed by single elements it appeared as one body, CTRL+C (copied) from a 3-D computer program and CTRL+V (pasted) into a real urban environment.
The deconstruction of the gas station referred significantly to virtual models of architecture.
We did a photographic documentation of the gas station which forms the basic material for the White Gas Station series.The viewers perception and geographical constituation of the real gas station in Hendersonville is only taking place through the photographic documentation. By a re-modelling of the photographic documentation the distortion of reality is removed. Screws and element joints, dirt, irregularities, diversity, trees and background elements are transformed into liquid transitions, cleanness, seriality, uniformity and the loss of geographical and cultural context.
Through the digital make over of the photographic documentation the gas station is displaced from a real context towards a virtual space and constitutes itself in an interzone between reality and virtuality. White Gas Station makes use of a reverse Thomas Demand practise. Reality is turned into a model reality thus discussing the parameters for our def-inition of realities.
WGS-5
