Peles Empire: Carmen Sylva

About

Peles Empire is a collaborative work founded in Frankfurt in 2005 by artists Barbara Wolff and Katharina Stoever. This ongoing project takes its title from the Romanian Peles, a historic castle built in 1883 and influenced by different architectural styles from the past centuries — Art Deco, Orientalism, Rococo and Renaissance. In a continued working process, Wolff and Stoever have reproduced nine different rooms from this castle, wallpapering galleries in London, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Basel, Los Angeles and Cluj with A3 colour copies of photographs of its lavish rooms. Entering into a productive critique of the gallery process, the artists produce new works for the space themselves or invite curators and artists — who exhibit an interest in processes of reproduction — to situate new artworks within the copied castle's walls. For this commission, Wolff and Stoever challenge the existing tenets of their project and explore a move from predominantly two-dimensional work into the realm of sculpture. The artists have re-created a room of the castle with objects based on sculptures from the original, or artworks that are based on the images they have previously re-produced of the castle. A three-way diversion through the minefield of re-presentation, this project unveils a further avenue of practice for the artists. It represents the continuance of their pertinent investigation into ideas surrounding the shifts of quality that occur in the transformation of objects through different filters. Supported by The Elephant Trust. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.