BERLIN.- The Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg in Berlin has opened a deeply atmospheric new exhibition, Possibilities of an Island: Thinking in Images from Gerstenberg to Scharf, inviting visitors into a rich, imaginative journey through fantastic art, Surrealism, and the power of collecting as a way of seeing the world.
Timed to coincide with the 100th birthdays of collectors Dieter and Hilde Scharf, the exhibition does more than celebrate an anniversary. It opens a window onto a multigenerational passion for art that stretches from the legendary collection of Otto Gerstenberg at the turn of the 20th century to the vision of the Scharf family today. For the first time, the museum is showing a substantial number of works that fall outside the long-term loan that has defined the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg since 2008, expanding the story of the collection in unexpected and revealing ways.
Spread across two floors, the exhibition brings together around 150 works, including paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and objects. Well-known figures such as Francisco de Goya, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Odilon Redon, Max Beckmann, Hannah Höch, Egon Schiele, and Jean Dubuffet appear alongside more elusive voices of fantastic art like Alfred Kubin, Léon Spilliaert, and Unica Zürn. The result is not a linear art-historical survey, but a drifting constellation of images that speak to one another across time.
Curated by Kyllikki Zacharias, the exhibition deliberately moves beyond a strict definition of Surrealism. Its title is drawn into focus by two striking floor sculptures by Swiss artist Kavata Mbiti, which serve as a conceptual threshold. One suggests organic growth and self-generation; the other evokes menace and instability. Between these poles, the exhibition unfolds as an “archipelago” of ideas.
Organized into twelve thematic chapters, Possibilities of an Island explores how artists respond to fear, uncertainty, and the pressures of everyday life. Visitors encounter visions of retreat into private worlds, imagined idylls, obsessive systems, ironic humor, dreamlike escapes, and reflections on mortality. Rather than offering solutions, the exhibition proposes art itself as a form of navigation—a way to endure, resist, or reimagine reality.
One of the exhibition’s strengths lies in how it allows seemingly marginal details to take center stage. Fantastical imagery, dark humor, and poetic ambiguity dominate the galleries, encouraging slow looking and personal interpretation. The show feels less like walking through a museum display and more like wandering through a mental landscape shaped by desire, anxiety, fantasy, and memory.
A parallel presentation at the Alte Nationalgalerie, running until mid-February 2026, complements the exhibition by highlighting another branch of the Scharf family’s collecting history, focused on Impressionism and Classical Modernism. Together, the two shows reveal how different collecting philosophies can grow from the same roots.
Ultimately, Possibilities of an Island is as much about thinking as it is about art. It asks how images help us cope with danger, loss, and longing—and how, even in dark times, imagination offers a place to stand.
