Titled succinctly with the capital letter “K,” this exhibition is to be understood as a story, not unlike a parable, about the “darkest concerns of human life,” as Walter Benjamin once described the theme of Franz Kafka’s literary oeuvre. That oeuvre is dominated by fragments of Kafka’s three great unfinished novels—Der Verschollene or Amerika, Der Prozess, Das Schloss—which alone are worth more than entire libraries of finished novels. These three texts are perpetuated and interpreted in Martin Kippenberger’s large-scale work The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s “Amerika,” in Orson Welles’ film adaptation of The Trial, and in Tangerine Dream’s album inspired by The Castle. Altogether, the three novels by Kafka form the “trilogy of loneliness,” according to his executor Max Brod. Seen in this light, we may also view “K” as a triptych, an exhibition that resembles a tripartite or a triple-layered picture. Its structure is therefore similar to that of a traditional altarpiece, with Amerika occupying the large central panel and The Trial and The Castle the side panels. The three parts can be read together as a remarkable allegory of the vicissitudes of life, or, in the writer’s words: “all these parables really set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already.” Presented entirely separately from one another in the exhibition, both in space and time, the three parts are each accorded their own assigned, atmospherically predestined place. The artistic sculptural installation is set in a glass-walled, floodlit arena-like performance space, the cinematic epic in a theater completely sheltered from daylight, and the symphonic compositions in a walled, fortress-like sound space. Visitors are invited to embark on what amounts to an excursion into the realms of art, film, and music—straight into the heart of vibrant life with all its ups and downs! But please do not rush things. Do not jump to conclusions. First try to see and hear as much as possible.