Gas Food Lodging

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Gas, Food, and Lodging is a series of paintings by Glen Rubsamen from 2020. The book includes 19 color illustrations from this series and an essay explaining the social and political implications of the works by Ivan Aime Valenciano. In these works, Valenciano explains, Chain store signage is juxtaposed with telecommunications apparatus and vestiges of roadside architecture and vegetation. These disparate compositional elements fuse into a personal, local, and heterogeneous intimacy that is then re-embedded in the indigenous structure of the landscape. Rubsamen’s paintings address the subterfuge of cultural imperialism and its local adaptation; they depict moments of systemic conflict: standardization, efficiency, calculability, predictability, the chaos of historic neglect and natural decay. The paintings are infused with an apocalyptic calm, as if caught in the temporary stillness of a hurricane’s eye. They suggest a global post-pandemic society that roams about in cars looking for quick nutrition and the temporary safety of chain stores, motels, and gas stations. Gas, Food, and Lodging becomes a mantra of identity, a comfort zone, the way nationality used to be…