2 - 21 December 2013

OUTPOST Members’ Show 2013 Selected by Peles Empire

Peles Empire was born in 2005 in Frankfurt and is a collaboration between Katharina Stoever (Giessen, 1982) and Barbara Wolff (Fogaras, 1980).

Press Release.

A conversation between Peles Empire and Tom Salt

Tom Salt: Could you give a bit of background about Peles Empire’s past projects, the collaborative nature of your practice and how this exhibition at OUTPOST relates to your continuing evolvement?

Peles Empire: We have been working as Peles for almost 9 years now, and the project began as a weekly salon in our living room in the red light district in Frankfurt, which then developed into an exhibition space in London. The backdrop of one of the rooms of the Romanian castle Peles (a historicism castle built about 100 years ago and mixing different architectural reproduction of styles) has always been part of the project, and part of the walls other people exhibit onto. For OUTPOST we wanted to turn the attention to the floor to highlight the objectness of the exhibited pieces and have decided to take something from our exhibition space with us - so this is actually a photograph of our space in London.

TS: You have described your practice as being concerned with reproduction. Is another way of thinking about the secondary nature of reproduction putting it under our feet and making us walk on it?

PE: This exhibition will look completely different in reproduction/documentation. All works are displayed on the floor of the gallery, but the “flatter objects”, Neil and Michael’s work, are displayed on the side of the wallpaper showing the walls of our space in London, and the “sculptures”, Vera, Henna, Luc, Desmond and Joannes’ work, are shown on the side showing “the floor” of the gallery. This is a simple divide but spins your head once flattened and documented...

TS: Reproduction can be seen as standing for a loss, a loss of the original, a loss of authenticity. How do you place loss and obsolescence in relation to the objects you make and you’ve chosen for the show?

PE: We are interested in the gain and loss through reproduction. Actually in the gap and the outcome of one copy to the next. Squeezing and pushing things through 2D to 3D and back to 2D is something we are interested in. The works we have chosen for this show are highlighting and talking about the “actuality” of artworks. We have chosen the works from 2D documentations from the members archive, but were particularly interested in how they talk about a 3D-ness.