The “road trip” narrative belongs to America’s twentieth century. In my collection of found black and white photographs, specifically, I was drawn to an enigmatic image of a family posing with small children in front of a small gas station; beyond them is the silence of a desolate landscape. In another photo, three young men are confidently posing in front of a 1930’s-40’s automobile, one is burning a cigarette. Viewing these photographs invites poiesis; relevance is instilled, and thus they embody a living history. Under the guise of history, the use of vintage American trucks is intended to place the setting in and out of time.

Looking beyond the painting, the desolate fecund American landscape as seen via the automobile or on wheels, gathered is the unavoidable roundtable of examples that stem from the American arts. The road trip, as examined in novels by Jack Kerouac and Fitzgerald’s description of automobiles in The Great Gatsby, to “Gas”, a painting by Edward Hopper, and twenty-six years later, is Ed Ruscha’s “Standard Station”. A sharp line of linear perspective guides the eye in both the image by Ruscha and the painting by Hopper. Drawing the viewer to and away from the filling station. Finally, from a more immediate literary immigrant perspective, is Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel, Lolita, aside from the relationship, it truly is an American road trip tale, threaded together by desire under the backdrop of an American landscape replete with rural fields, gas stations, and roadside motels.

What cannot be ignored here is the central explosion. The title “Ad Gas, Ad Gas!” Is aimed to push themes of power and dominance towards the historical and controversial. Befitting, the title is an enthusiastic chant of encouragement in Mandarin Chinese, whereas conversely, in English, it has a more menacing tone. One that for me, carries sociopolitical, capital, and psychological implications. A “pyromaniac,” for instance, describes an uncontrollable allure to the power of the flame; their power over the flame is godlike, like that of Prometheus. The expanding desolate landscape, American cowboy attire, filling station, and explosion together are indicative of a packaged American ethos. I considered the Amoco sign to read as “Ethos” instead, but chose to retain the original text in keeping with Ruscha’s use of “Standard”.