Petrol Stations

The petrol station – on the edge of urban civilization – is an integral part of our daily locomotion. Placed on the side of the American Highway and the European Autobahn, it is the materialized belief in progress through technology. The petrol station is a media-mythical charged location. In the works of her series ‘Petrol Stations’ Vanessa Leißring removes the petrol stations from their context and isolates them in documental self-luminous photographs. They are focal points of supply: that is what furnishes them with their meaning as a part of an utilization mechanism which is initiated by the human being and comes to an end in technical progress.

The decontextualizing reveals a gaze on form, arrangement and construction. Leißring’s typological portraits of the petrol stations show the bare buildings: a simple roofage, pillared, illuminated by neon-lights in the colors of the petrol companies. The stations loom monolithic into the night’s black sky. Her photographs show the locations and their architecture as sculptures in public space and addresses possible relations to branding and urban architecture. The light of the neon-signs – appearing unnaturally saturated – serves as a point of reference and guidance. But the in the deserted scenarios, they become a message without a target group – a medium without contents. The names of the gas companies turn into ornaments, which embellish the roofs and signage but they don’t communicate. On Leißring’s photographs the stations are nightly wasteland without any connection to their usage. The street runs through the image but end in black. There is no visible movement and processes are interrupted. Connected in inseparable unity architecture and light turn the everyday objects into aestheticised impressions of themselves.

Find the whole project here:
petrolstations.de