Neon tubes, metal frame
20x160cm
Carried out with the assistance of Walter Hagen, Vaduz
Who pays? – that's the question asked in glowing letters on the wall behind the bar of the café in the Kunstmuseum. This may put you in mind of the illuminated advertisements of modern consumer worlds or the neon tubes that were discovered and tested as a material of art particularly since the sixties. Does the question refer to the café bill? Or, given the institutional context of the museum, should it be seen as questioning who pays the costs of art? And what does it mean to be confronted with such a question at the heart of the major nancial centre Vaduz?
This critical analysis of the signi cance of economic values and the status of art and its players is formative of the work of the "artist group" RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & co). Their name is equally the formulation of a working method that integrates co-operations and a host of artistic media. RELAX replaces the artist duo Chiarenza and Hauser, formed in 1983, with whom the urban and landscape planner Daniel Croptier also worked from 1997 to 2001. In addition to the motto thinking on your own is a crime, RELAX has devised a number of other short, provocative slogans, for example je suis une femme pourquoi pas vous? or art as service.
Paper cups with the words you pay but you don't agree with the price printed on them, used for special occasions in the art world and also distributed to cafés, highlight a discrepancy between price and value which for RELAX is particularly characteristic of art work. As containers for coffee to go, they are also exemplary of a search for other public spheres, constantly inducing RELAX to leave the spaces reserved for art so as to ask questions that may cut to the core of society.
