If There Is Tension

This history serves as the starting point for an exploration of what is held back, what can escape, and what continues to move forward despite existing control systems.

As part of Berlin Art Week, Friedrich Andreoni and Pharaz Azimi are presenting new, site-specific works that are being shown for the first time. Their works explore human experiences situated between memory and progress, freedom and control, movement and limitation. The history of the site itself—which lies along the former Berlin Wall—is also incorporated into the works.

In his work, Friedrich Andreoni combines sound, sculpture, drawing, installation, performance, and video. Created for the exhibition is “I don’t wanna meet the King” (2026): A group of parrots seemingly circling restlessly is accompanied by an intense sound. Their flight initially conveys a sense of freedom, yet remains trapped in an endless loop. Additional sculptural and acoustic works lead down into the former vault, transforming it into a space between movement, stillness, and control.

Pharaz Azimi’s works also explore everyday objects and the systems that shape our lives. Familiar objects are transformed and linked to personal memories and social experiences. Partially hidden in corners and nooks of the exhibition space, the works reveal themselves only upon closer inspection. Particularly striking are colorful sponges with seemingly friendly faces, which ironically conceal what they absorb—thus alluding to unresolved personal and social truths.

The exhibition takes as its starting point a present that cannot simply be understood as a linear progression. “If There Is Tension” explores ruptures, uncertainty, and opposing forces, and asks how one can live with these tensions.

Walter Benjamin’s “On the Concept of History,” written in 1940, serves as a conceptual point of reference. His conception of history as a succession of ruptures and contradictions shapes the exhibition just as much as the question of how the past and the present remain connected.

“If There Is Tension” offers no simple answers or resolutions. Rather, the exhibition invites visitors to endure tension, to look more closely, and to reflect on how one might shape a life within such contradictions.