This talk explores the idea of the threshold as both concept and method within Peles Duo’s practice, working between dimensions (2D and 3D) and across painting, sculpture, photography, and performance. Occupied by the figures from mythology and art history, Peles Duo’s work blurs boundaries as images become objects and materials shift roles, creating intersections between mediums.

Central to their approach is a questioning of the status quo in how history and architecture are perceived, reproduced, and understood. The project began in 2005 as an illegal bar in Frankfurt’s red-light district, a space between public and private, featuring a reconstruction of a room from Romania’s Peleș Castle—an architecture of layered imitation. This logic of copying, translation, and transformation continues to shape their process, with works that exist in a constant state of flux and dialogue.

Peles Duo (formerly Peles Empire) was founded in 2005 in Frankfurt, Germany, by Katharina Stöver (Germany, 1982) and Barbara Wolff (Romania, 1980). The artists studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt under Michael Krebber and Wolfgang Tillmans, as well as at the Slade School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools in London. Based in Berlin since 2014, Peles Duo has developed an artistic practice rooted in appropriation, reproduction, and sampling. Inspired by the non-hierarchical interiors of Romania’s Peleș Castle, their work questions originality through painting, sculpture, photography, and installation, focusing on processes of emergence, deconstruction, and collaborative authorship.

Guest Lectures: Peles Duo

Tresholds