‘faces of mind’ – art between the visible and the inner self

The exhibition brings together mainly works from the PECADI Art Foundation of collectors Dr Carmen and Dietmar Peikert, supplemented by selected works by friends and prominent artists. As a private collection that has grown over decades, it preserves artistic treasures and supports the work of artists.

Curated by Dr Anna Havemann, these works are being made publicly accessible for the first time in Berlin in this thematic concentration. faces of mind at Haus. Kunst. Mitte. focuses on the head as a field of painterly experimentation. The works on display understand the face and facial expressions not as classic portraits, but as projection surfaces for emotional states – from fear, trauma and loneliness to joy and ecstatic happiness. The face appears both as a mirror of the inner self and as a mask of the hidden.

The exhibition

It unfolds in eight chapters that evoke contrasting poles – from form and deformation to sharpness and blurring to concealment and representation. The interplay of the works reveals a multi-layered image of the head as an expression of inner states and artistic freedom. In over 200 depictions of the human head from more than five decades, artists show how form and emotion, surface and depth, perception and identity are constantly being explored anew.

It brings together works in painting, sculpture, drawing and photography and highlights how our understanding of self-recognition, emotionality and social reality changes over time. A change that is simultaneously reflected and brought to life in the eyes of both the artists and the viewers. The gaze is more than just seeing. It reflects how we interpret the world.

At the same time, it explores the interface between art and neuroscience and focuses on the question of how emotion, memory and perception arise in the brain and why faces move us so immediately.


Many of the participating artists transform inner processes, restlessness or biographical experiences into visible form and make states of mind that defy verbal description tangible. Art thus becomes a space of resonance between inner reality and outer form. Art has a self-reflective effect that has been scientifically proven in terms of neuroscience, both for artists and for the audience. This connection is fundamental to the exhibition faces of mind. Here, one encounters doctors who are collectors, artists who collect, and scientists who use art as a basis for brain research or psychoanalysis.

"Art is more than representation. It is encounter. It connects the visible with the invisible, the conscious with the unconscious.

HAUS. KUNST. MITTE. becomes the sounding board of our collection and creates connections with the viewers. If the works in this exhibition move you, irritate you, comfort you or transform you, then we as collectors are delighted, and art achieves what it can do at its best: it makes us feel that we are alive and that the invisible in all of us has a face." Drs. Carmen and Dietmar Peikert, collectors

ACCOMPANYING PROGRAMME

16 January 2026 | 6 – 10 p.m.
Vernissage: Meet the artists Saturday, 14 February 2026 | 5 p.m. Reading and talk ‘KopfSache’

Wednesday, 25 February 2026 | 7 p.m. Talk: Art and Neuroscience Prof. Dr. Moritz Helmstaedter, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Prof. Malek Bajbouj, Director of the Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité, Universitätsmedizin, Moderator: Boris Pofalla, freelance author and art critic

Wednesday, 18 March 2026 | 7 p.m. Talk: Art and the Psyche Prof. Dr. Mazda Adli – Medical Director of the Fliedner Clinic Berlin, author of Stress in the City Clemens Krauss (artist, collector, psychoanalyst, Vienna) Moderator: André Schmitz – former State Secretary for Culture, Board of Trustees, Haus. Kunst. Mitte.