Peles Empire: Carmen Sylva @ Sierra Metro, 7 Aug-11 Sep

Peles Empire is a collaboration between London-Based German artists Katharina Stoever and Barbara Wolff. An ongoing project, Peles Empire takes its name from a garishly ornate castle in Romania, built between 1893 and 1913. Like a lot of European architecture during this period, the castle is a mix of conflicting styles from different periods of history, including Art Deco, Orientalism, Rococo and the Renaissance.

The Romanian equivalent of the Balmoral estate, adored by Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II alike, Peles Castle was built by King Carol I of Romania, establishing a royal hunting preserve on the property.

Since 2005, the artists have recreated nine rooms of the castle in different locations, including London, Frankfurt, Los Angeles, Antwerp, Basel, and Bremen, often reproducing the rooms in simple black and white, allowing the details of the room to mingle with the space it inhabits.

For their show at Sierra Metro Peles Empire will continue their ongoing project, reproducing elements of the castle in the Edinburgh gallery. Making sculptures based on the objects found in the castle, the artists will further obscure the reproduction process by recreating objects based on the images they have made of the castle in previous exhibitions.

Like most conceptual art, the work is subtly provocative, exploring the minute effects context has on an object – an object already untethered from the original. It will further explore the shift in quality that occurs in the transformation of objects through different filters. A seemingly endless process, it will be interesting to see what the exhibition realistically achieves – or if it would be better off remaining an idea. [Andrew Cattanach]