Room 2236, an exhibition by Paul Ferens, with artist Raoul Zoellner acting as a free-associating tour guide. The show begins with Escape For The Weekend a video by Zoellner in the style of an expanded PS4 trailer. It features Ferens’ work brought out by the artists and curator (Tom Esam) on a road trip to Tropical Island in Brandenberg. Zoellner adds his own fictional narrative to the video which is a simultaneously confusing and intriguing response to Ferens’ work. Full video viewable bellow.

Ferens’s found a love of nature through playing PS4. These paintings are of screenshots of landscapes discovered on Playstation. Ferens’s and Zoellner regularly come together to enjoy medieval landscapes of PS4 games while riding through beautiful Central European forests on a digital horse. It is about escapism, looking for a peaceful place and escaping real life. The road trip’s destination is the artificial bio-dome pool-resort Tropical Island, a place of pure escapism. Visiting this place can be a profoundly sad experience as the fakeness is inescapable, but when reality become too bleak perhaps for a moment, you may be able to trick yourself that the fantasy is real.

The exhibition took place during a Covid-19 lockdown when art spaces were closed and people were expected to stay within their close social bubbles. As a result this exhibition was meant to be experienced alone and took place in a semi-public space in East Berlin. Guests request a time slot and are sent an audio file and instructions of where to begin playing it. Zoellner takes on the role of tour guide he continues the fantastical narrative set up in Escape For The Weekend, a future world where Antifa have become the metaphorical barbarians at the gates and corporate public sculptures, test houses and office towers have become scared monuments. To escape this sinister world the visitor must follow the instructions completely, to guide them, whilst supplying access codes towards the sanctuary of Feren’s work