Perhaps it should rather be called Exhibitoclash. Somehow Manfred Wolf-Plotteggs architecture contributes little to find your way through the current exhibition Iconoclash at ZKM Karlsruhe.

If one finds the ascent over the balcony and through the Musicoclash audio installation (whose concept one enjoys, but otherwise has difficulties to fit into the topic) there are still the distractions of the permanent exhibition. Having descended over the especially built diagonal staircase into the heart of the exhibition formed of a variety of black squares, it still remains difficult to orientate yourself. The silvery shining triangular columns, which try to bring a certain rhythm to the space of the exhibition halls, rather contribute to the vagueness, instead of helping the visitor to understand and discover the different kinds iconoclasms presented.

Martin Kippenbergers, Modell Interconti, A 1972 Gerhard Richter painting, wood frame, metal legs, 13 × 31.3 × 23.7 inch, 1987

Anyway the strongest, funniest objects and works most worth seeing hide in the two side corridors, on whose boxes the architect did only have small influence (apart from Martin Kippenbergers great “Modell Interconti” (1987), which, placed alone in the midst of one of the halls looks a bit like a small table standing in a factory building). Kippenberger bought a 1972, all-gray abstract painting by Gerhard Richter, added a frame and screwed legs onto it. Having transformed a picture into a table-like sculpture, Kippenberger—an avid Richter fan—sold the piece at a price far lower than the cost of the Richter.

Especially Dario Gambonis great “Russian corner” is to be mentioned here. He explores the fate of political monuments in the former Soviet Union. The history of the Christ-Saviour-Cathedral, which is located today again in the Moscow’s city center near the Kremlin stands like hardly another project both for the hybrid of the Soviet state and for that of today’s orthodox church. It shows exemplarily the development of political monumental art: Blown up under Stalin in order to give way for a gigantic Palace of the Soviet, that soon found its foundations sinking into the mud of Moskva river. In its place the world’s largest heated open-air swimming pool was built (the basin had a diameter of 130 meters), to yield after Perestroika times to a neo-catholic new building of a cathedral. Criticized violently by all sides, this only shows the Moscow Patriarch’s representative over-anxieties, while in the whole country the churches disintegrate.