The abandoned and dormant landscapes of the West Coast of the United States have always held a special attraction for photographer and architect Iñaki Bergera. These scenarios of secondary roads, far from the major highways, were the ones he traveled between June and August 2012 and in which, almost fortunately, he located gas stations that were progressively abandoned with the arrival of large multinationals in the 90s. As a result of this trip, what today is Twentysix (Abandoned) Gasoline Stationsan exhibition produced by Museo Universidad de Navarra that was presented on Wednesday, April 25.

The exhibition, consisting of a series of 26 photographs and a video made by the artist himself -entitled Oil Derrick-, can be visited from April 25 to October 14 at the Torre Hall. In the presentation to the media, the artist was accompanied by Valentín Vallhonrat, artistic director of the Museum.

Bergera explained that he has always felt "a critical fascination for the American landscape, for its state of abandonment, of homage to time and memory. There are no people in these places and it is not something premeditated. I am the one who inhabits them with my gaze". Likewise, he has underlined the important weight that the relationship between architecture and photography has in his work, and the look that this starting point implies.

In this sense, the artist has pointed out his interest in "the morphology and abstract condition" of gas stations, functional pieces that he began to portray without a fixed itinerary, in different road trips along the American highways of states like Arizona, New Mexico and California. "I had a hunting attitude," he notes.

In Twentysix (Abandoned) Gasoline Stations, Bergera also pays tribute to artist Ed Ruscha, a major influence on the pop art and conceptual photography scene. Ruscha, fifty years before Bergera, traveled the iconic Route 66, and photographed 26 gas stations, still active, which he later published in the book Twenty Six Gasoline Stations.

The Museum has published a catalog of the exhibition, which can now be purchased at the center's store and online. The book, which reproduces the pieces that are part of the exhibition, is prefaced by Alberto Martín, founder of the Centro de Fotografías de la Universidad de Salamanca. The price is 24 euros.

This evening, at 7 p.m., the artist will give a masterclass accompanied by art critic and curator Horacio Fernández, in the Museum's classroom 1. Then, at 8 p.m., the inauguration and opening of the exhibition will take place.

THE ARTIST

Iñaki Bergera (Vitoria, 1972) is an architect with a PhD from the University of Navarra and full professor at the University of Zaragoza. With a scholarship from 'la Caixa', he graduated from the Master in Design Studies at Harvard University. Researcher at the CCA in Montreal, the Center for Creative Photography in Arizona or the International Center of Photography in New York, he has directed the national project Photography and Modern Architecture in Spain and curated exhibitions at the ICO Museum (PHE 2014 and 2016). In 2001 he studied photography at the Harvard School of Visual Arts and since then he has developed a photographic work embodied in solo exhibitions such as America, Urban Landscape ( 2006), A Tale of Two Cities (2008), In the Landscape ( 2010) and Twentysix (Abandoned) Gasoline Stations (SCAN 2014, PHE 2015) and in group exhibitions such as Change of Course ( Tabacalera, 2017), The Creation of Contemporary Landscape ( Alcobendas, 2016) or Unfinished (Venice, 2016).