The source of Peles Empire’s artistic practice is connected with the provenance of its name in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania: Peles Castle. The eclectic building from the 1870s is distinguished by its uncommon concentration of the most disparate styles – each room imitates a different era in architectural history.

Barbara Wolff and Katharina Stöver have worked together as Peles Empire for nine years – their photographic appropriations of this “edifice of copies” and their subsequent ongoing spatial interpretations of the source material constitute a central point of departure for their works. An important strategy used by Peles Empire is copying the copy; inherent as well is the process of translating something spatial into two-dimensionality, which ultimately again manifests itself in three-dimensional objects. Also significant is that although the original documentary image may sacrifice some of its figurative quality through the artists’ manual reproduction of particular parts of the image, it simultaneously gains spatial quality as an abstract object. Peles Empire shows the complex and – in the truest sense of the word – multilayered results of this method in their first solo exhibition at WENTRUP.

Opening 27 November 2014, 6 – 9 pm 
Exhibition 28 November 2014 – 17 January 2015

WENTRUP / Tempelhofer Ufer 22 / 10963 Berlin