Twentysix Gasoline Stations

Twentysix Gasoline Stations is Michalis Pichler’s homage to Ed Ruscha, who published his groundbreaking and highly influential Twentysix Gasoline Stations in 1962.

Pichler’s version offers a more modern update, examining twenty-six German gas stations all owned by the same company and all displaying the same signage and architectural elements. At first glance, all twenty-six images appear to depict the same pristine and brightly-colored generic structure. Only upon further examination, aided by Pichler’s captions, does the reader get the full extent of the joke, which is punctuated by the book’s final image: a disembodied hand holding an excerpt from Ruscha in which he explains “the eccentric stations were the ones I threw out”