Exhibition period: September 1 - 26, 2020
Venue: i2a Istituto Internazionale di Architettura, Limonaia, Villa Saroli, Lugano

Curated by: Caterina De Pietri

Artists: Tonatiuh Ambrosetti, Alessandra Calò, Simone Casetta, Bruno Cattani, Gabriele Chiapparini/Camilla Marrese, Giuseppe Chietera, Marco D’Anna, Aline d’Auria, Matteo Di Giovanni, Délio Jasse, Milo Keller, Anastasia Khoroshilova, Ángel Marcos, Stefan Milosavljevic, Enrico Minasso, Maurizio Montagna, Davide Monteleone, Pino Musi, Igor Ponti, Luca Reffo, Caio Reisewitz, Carolina Sandretto, Laura Santamaria, Domenico Scarano, Fabio Tasca, Andrea Tonellotto, Salvatore Vitale, Jean-Marc Yersin

The start of 2020 gave no warning that only a few weeks later, our lives and our daily routine would change radically. Suddenly, a total stop: all still, confined at home, in isolation, limited by social distancing.
The idea to counter social isolation with a collective, choral, multi-handed book was Artphilein Editions’ riposte to impose a positive sense onto this juncture, one difficult for many and extremely tragic for others: Non-Gasoline Stations. So we sent the following message to a group of artists:
“The message repeatedly proclaimed in the media ‘after the end of the ongoing emergency, nothing will be like before’ is left open to decryption: intimidation, exhortation, annihilation or what? As an inevitable consequence of our forced immobility, in the meantime car traffic and, consequently, fuel consumption have dropped considerably. The future will tell us if and what will really change and if the car will continue to be a means of locomotion. Let's try to imagine that gasoline stations lose their function as fuel dispensers: they become obsolete, a historical find, an archaeological testimony of an outdated mode of transport.”
 
All the artists addressed with this message welcomed the invitation and sent their chosen image. Each image selected for this publication makes up a mosaic, the unifying link of which is given by the common atmosphere of suspended time, of transience, of fading.