Owners and managers of galleries featuring fine jewels are fully aware of the problem. It s all but impossible. Arrange the pieces in a showcase and you rob them of their material angehauchtheit . Put them on mannequins and you ignore their conceptual character. On entering the elongated exhibition space, you find yourself drawn to a spatial construction that rises out of the dark like a sparkling jewellery shop temptingly decorated for the December holidays.
Display cases consist of beams, placed above and below one another, which cross at extreme angles.
Video monitors set perpendicular to the corners of these cases show artists at work. Jewels appearing on large projection screens flash by in a context that includes not only pop and movie stars, industrial design and fashion, but also pornography and other forms of vulgarity. All things considered, Zaha Hadid and her German colleague Patrik Schuhmacher designed the exhibition as a single monumental, deconstructivist jewel. In so doing, Hadid was referring to her earlier concept for the Soviet Suprematist exhibition, another project that she crafted into one large, abstract, painterly composition. Hadid, however, demolishes the geometric forms, leaving them looking as though an explosion has broken them into pieces.