A makeshift soup kitchen within a contemporary art gallery, Art Soup is a Peles Empire project that endeavours to serve modern art-inspired meals to the public. Set amidst ‘entrance(1), entrance(2)’, a Temple Bar Gallery exhibition in which culturally-loaded motifs and images are manipulated, distorted, and reassigned meaning to, Peles Empire’s soup-serving becomes an transformative process of (mis)representation, loaded with irony and wit: Post-Modernism never tasted so good. We spoke to Peles Empire’s Katharina Stoever and Barbara Wolff about some of the ideas behind their practice.
So what is Art Soup, and where did the idea come from?
Art Soup is a series of events, where we make soup based on particular artworks. In London, we have a large installation based on the Peles Castle in Romania, that we use to exhibit the work of other artists within. Because we’re on a residency in Dublin at the moment, we can’t work on that, so instead we came up with the idea of making soup inspired by other artists, and serving it within the installation of the castle we’ve made in Dublin.
What’s on the menu?
The first artist we’ve made soup inspired by is Constantin Brancusi: a Romanian sculptor that we admire, and who is quite influential at the moment. The shape of the vegetables in the soup will be based on the shape of one of his most famous sculptures, ‘The Endless Column’. Then we’re serving Piet Mondrian soup on May 22nd, and Jackson Pollock soup in June. There’s quite an ironic feel to it…
Well, I guess soup and art are…quite different…
Oh no – you wait and see!
But, I mean, it brings up all sorts of issues about permanence and transience, and the value of art compared to food. Is Art Soup intended as a comment on these sorts of issues, or is it just supposed to be something people can enjoy?
Yes and no. I think in Peles we’re more concerned with the idea of how things progress and transform. So it’s not so much a critical work, as an investigation.
And why did you choose the artists you’ve selected? Are they artists who’ve inspired you personally, or was it more to do with their iconic statuses?
More because they’re iconic. Also, they all seem to be quite fashionable artists at the moment.
Your work always seems to come back to the Peles Castle, which you’re also named after. When did you decide to use the castle as the focal point of your practice?
Well we began making art in our living room, in the red light district in Frankfurt. We started making images inspired by the castle, as a kind of ironic take on the location we were in. We like the way the castle combines different architectural styles – Rococo, Roman, Art Deco – so we took that idea of copying, mixing and revisiting, and transformed it even further. The room was also a bar, so it had a social function, and also the liquor served had the effect of further distorting our manipulated images of the castle.
Your work is on show as part of the ‘entrance(1), entrance(2)’ exhibition at Temple Bar Gallery, which is also based around this idea of image manipulation. I found when I was looking at the exhibition that your installation really complements and visually links in with the works of the other artists. Did you work on the exhibition collaboratively, or is that a coincidence?
No, it’s actually coincidence. Well, part coincidence, part curatorial decision.
Finally, can you describe your art in three words?
Katharina: Sexy! [laughs]
Barbara: No, no! [laughs] No. Well three words is hard, but I guess our ethos is… that it doesn’t have to look good, it just has to be art.
‘entrance(1), entrance(2)’ runs at Temple Bar Gallery and Studios until June 2nd. The Art Soup events take place on May 22nd and June 22nd.
Words: Rosa Abbott
