This series documents the status of 26 gas stations that use to belong to Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX). Some photographs show the dilapidated appearance and abandonment of facilities that were once operational, and others simply record the traces and vestiges of the place where one of them once existed.
The title and composition of the series allude to the work Twentysix Gasoline Stations, by American artist Ed Ruscha, who published in book form a photographic project documenting the 26 gas stations he found on a trip between Los Angeles and Oklahoma City, in the United States.
The series by Berruecos is part of an extensive tradition of artists who, from the 1960s until now, have appropriated or reinterpreted the Ruscha series. However, unlike the American's photographs, those of Berruecos document gas stations that no longer operate as such and that are scattered throughout different parts of Mexico.
Made during the istration of Enrique Peña Nieto, in which the last step was taken to reverse the nationalization of petroleum decreed by President Lázaro Cárdenas in 1936, the piece seems to function not only as a metaphor for PEMEX, a state-owned company dismantled and brought to failure by cases of diversion of resources and corruption, but for the country as a whole. In this sense, the photographs function as a document that gives an of the ruinous state of a national project that seems to move in the opposite direction to the protection of the resources, the interests, and the well-being of its inhabitants.
EKA, November 2019
https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/projects/transforming-artist-books/summaries/edward-ruscha-twentysix-gasoline-stations-1963
https://centrodelaimagen.cultura.gob.mx/bienal-de-fotografia/xvii/galeria/diego-berruecos.html
This series documents the status of 26 gas stations that use to belong to Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX). Some photographs show the dilapidated appearance and abandonment of facilities that were once operational, and others simply record the traces and vestiges of the place where one of them once existed.
