Allora & Calzadilla

Allora and Calzadilla

Petrified Petrol Pump, 2010

Fossil-filled limestone
176 x 362 x 120 cm 

Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection

Allora & Calzadilla’s artistic work often unites and collapses material elements from diverse social, geographical and cultural systems into a single object. These principals of physical and temporal displacement are illustrated through processes of sedimentation in Petrified Petrol Pump, an abandoned gasoline pump that appears to have turned into stone. Made from fossil-filled limestone, the indexes of ancient life forms that are visible throughout the sculptural body attest to the organic plenitude of the earth’s pre-history, the very life forms whose long process of anaerobic decomposition provides the material used today to generate petrol-based energy. The work’s commanding physicality establishes the gas pump as a totem of the developed world in the dawn of the 21st century; however, the outlandishness of the object simultaneously questions the values of contemporary society and the future residues of its “fuelled” culture. The work thus revolves around the confrontation between nature and consumer society, critically addressing human dependence on the condensed corpses of extinct animals for life. 
 Petrified Petrol Pump lacks branding for any specific oil company, but the model has been identified as a BP pump. Although the artists created the work before the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the catastrophe has naturally been part of discussions of the work since.
 

CURRENTLY ON VIEW:

Group show: Becoming Ocean: a social conversation about the Ocean

Curator: Hélène Guenin, Chus Martínez, Sébastien Ruiz,and Marie-Ann Yemsi

Venue: Villa Arson, Nice

Date: 8 May 2025 -  24 August 2025

The exhibition is part of the program for the Nice Biennial of Arts and the Ocean, organized by the City of Nice as part of the United Nations Conference on the Oceans (UNOC3) to be held in Nice from June 9 to 13, 2025.

PAST EXHIBITIONS:
 

Group show: Remedios. Where new land might grow

Curator: Daniela Zyman

Venue: C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Córdoba
Date: April 14, 2023 -  March 30,  2024

Group show: Der Angriff der Gegenwart / The Assault of the Present

Curator: Brigitte Felderer
Venue: Heiligenkreuzer Hof / University of Applied Arts Vienna 
Date: December 9,  2020 - April 10, 2021

Group show: Atopia – Migration, Heritage and Placelessness

Curator: Valentina Gutiérrez and Daniela Zyman

Venue: Musei de Arte Contemoráneo, Lima, Peru

Date: August 16, 2017 – November 26, 2017

Group show: Atopia – Migration, Heritage and Placelessness

Curator: Valentina Gutiérrez and Daniela Zyman

Venue: Centro Cultural Metropolitano, Quito, Ecuador

Date: August 10, 2016 – September 29, 2016

Group show: Atopia – Migration, Heritage and Placelessness 

Curator: Valentina Gutiérrez and Daniela Zyman 

Venue: Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, Colombia

Date: March 1, 2016 – May 29, 2016

Group show: Atopia – Migration, Heritage and Placelessness

Curator: Viviana Kuri and Daniela Zyman

Venue: Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Mexico 

Date: May 14, 2014 – October 5, 2014