VADUZ.- The exhibition What is wealth? by the artist collective RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & co) kicks off the 2026 programme year at Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein.

Marie-Antoinette Chiarenza (b. 1957 in Tunis, Tunisia) and Daniel Hauser (b. 1959 in Bern, Switzerland) have been collaborating since 1983, operating under the name RELAX since 1997. It stands for a stance that suspends speed, the pressure of expectations and tensions, creating space for reflection and fundamental questions.

RELAX usually work based on specific places and situations, incorporating the exhibition venue and social, political, economic and ecological contexts into their practice. The artists’ multimedia works challenge our values as well as the canon and structures of art: how do they come about, who shapes them? What consequences and decisions do they generate? Taking many different forms, their works routinely negotiate questions of labour, value creation and solidarity economy – and thus forms of collaboration within and outside of art.

With subtle humour and an investigative eye, RELAX open up new perspectives: the large installation What is wealth? (2010–2017) from Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein’s collection forms the starting point of the show, prompting in-depth musings on value, property, responsibility, memory and happiness. Presented in different zones (a Cage Room, a Waste Room and a Wheel of Fortune), a range of objects invite us to reflect on forms of value and meaning – playfully, critically and without any predetermined answers. The zones also include various pieces from the museum’s collection selected by RELAX.

Works by RELAX have supplied the title of two previous exhibitions at the museum: Who pays? (2006) in 2017 and What do we want to keep? (2018) in 2021. Posing open questions like these, RELAX prompt us to engage in communal reflection; after all, as one of their titles puts it, thinking alone is criminal.

The exhibition What is wealth? was created in close collaboration with RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & co). The show brings together works from Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein’s collection with a number of works created especially for this solo display. On the one hand, the artist duo have updated a number of existing works, including the sound installation es wird wieder laut, it’s getting loud again (1995/2025). On the other, they have created various new works on paper, sculptural works and situational installations.

Of particular note is the fact that RELAX deliberately hark back to coloured pencil hand drawing in an age where media information is increasingly being communicated through digital channels.

„Each drawing is a search for colour and writing that may be visible, but is usually hard to make out, as if a whisper in the mind were trying to leave traces on a sheet of paper. The rather short phrases are reminiscent of slogans, certainties or uncertainties,“ as RELAX say.

At the same time, the eleven drawings from the ongoing series phrases multiples, for example, reflect on their own work, bringing it together in a new form as a reservoir. In resources, human (2025), RELAX engage with concepts familiar from models of economic thought such as Total Quality Management and New Public Management. This brings into focus a world defined by thinking in terms of efficiency, a world that sees people first and foremost as a resource and/or as consumers. In access, control (2025), several cable conduits of different colours penetrate the surface of a white exhibition wall, thereby drawing attention to hidden infrastructures. Here again, the piece reflects the examination of our current lifeworld crisscrossed by copper and optical fibre cables.

A production of Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, curated by Christiane Meyer-Stoll with Leslie Ospelt.