The install of this exhibition poses the question what it would have meant if Peles Empire had been commissioned to reinterpret one of the existing rooms of the Peles Castle? What it would have meant for the legacy of the castle the purposeful co-existence of a play on the relationship between the copy and the original within its own structure? These questions deal with a long historical line of heritage, image representation and perspectives. Peles Empire has been tackling those notions as fragmented histories in a constellation of copies since 2005.
Drawing an arc in time, their first solo exhibition at Suprainfinit gallery highlights a new series of works based on a picture of a gobelin in the Peles castle that shows a bastardized representation of Cleopatra. Perceived by the artist duo as a gap of translation between Cleopatra as a solemn Egyptian figure and its European romanticised representation in Peles, the artists excavate the (non)space in between the copies and the subsequent layers triggered. In its quintessence, the castle is a collection of copies in architecture, a dream of historical edifices and interiors made real.
And still, if the artist duo was given a Carte blanche by the castle, which historical frame(s) would they rerevert? A multilayered one from the future, possibly.
For this exhibition, the artists have worked site-specifically with Suprainfinit's terrazzo floor merging it with the gobelin depicting Cleopatre. They distort the images and histories they work with by stimulating a shift in perception, space and materials. The works often become a painting, print and sculpture in one, subtly exemplified in the making technique of the Cleopatre wall pieces. The poured jesmonite panels not only have the red-ish pigment inside the material, but they also have been painted on top by using the same paint, as well as having been printed on using the original photograph of the castle's gobelin. The cross-contamination of materials and meanings opens up fresh perspectives on looking and becoming, thus shifting into a non-hierarchical approach to history, styles and techniques. The concept of abstracting an original through its reproduction has been essential throughout their artistic practice. Perhaps the space of Suprainfinit is precisely becoming that intentionally distorted room inside the Peles castle.

Courtesy of the artist and Suprainfinit, Bucharest