Peles Empire. The Sky Opens Twice

Peles Empire. The Sky Opens Twice
29.06.2019 — 05.09.2019

Opening: June 28, 6–10pm

Yesterday becomes today, top becomes bottom, inside becomes outside: the shift in paradigms and perspectives is the nexus of content in the solo exhibition The Sky Opens Twice by the Berlin-based artist duo Peles Empire, on show at the Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien (KM– Graz). Several large-format new productions toy with the perception of exhibition visitors by adapting, mirroring, and distending the venue’s architecture.

The agenda of Peles Empire involves scrutinizing the relations between original and copy, but also repetitively applying various reproduction techniques. For over a decade now, the artist group has been devoted to the interplay between origin and repetition. Serving as a historical visual template for all of their work are photographs of Peleș Castle in the Romanian town of Sinaia. However, the current sculptures and spatial installations usually only vaguely reference their source, which is in fact almost invisible due to prolific copying.

The Sky Opens Twice (2019) is the title of a large-format installation in the main hall of the KM–. It also references a page from the first collage novel by Max Ernst, La femme 100 têtes, from the year 1929. The sky above the KM– appears to open, as the title indicates, for the portrayal of the large ceiling of windows over the exhibition hall, measuring more than 100 square meters, which now also extends over its lateral walls. As curator Jana Franze explains, The Sky Opens Twice illustrates the variability of reality, indicating how the present—even if not always immediately apparent—draws on the past.