Showcase 4: Florian Graf

Text by Leopold Weinberg

I have known Florian Graf since our shared time studying architecture at ETH Zurich. Over the years since the turn of the millennium, our camaraderie has evolved into a friendship that developed very cautiously and with perseverance into a deep connection.

Florian's works also delve deeply and multifaceted. This is owed to his career path and diverse talents. The foundation of his work lies in his education as an architect, always striving to merge his designs with practical functionality ('form follows function') and not disregarding the laws of physics. As an artist, he has partially freed himself from this constraint, shifting functionality more towards the intellectual, poetic, pictorial, and humorous aspects. Physics (statics), except for his partially large-scale sculptures, can also be ignored within the realm of art. Several of his works play with familiar objects that have been somehow manipulated, prompting the observer, perhaps only upon a second glance, to realize that something is not quite right. Graf's work adds a touch of humor to the seemingly everyday, imbues the familiar with a poetic quality, and rewards the attentive observer for their second look.

Text by Mark Eting

Florian Graf's works evoke an interplay between imagination, facts, dreams and fears of people inhabiting a house, a city or a planet. His art addresses questions of identity and orientation in a transient society characterized by diversity. In particular, he is interested in the relationship between the sensually perceiving body, architecture and society. He questions visible and invisible systems that determine our everyday lives and examines how intimate and collective thoughts are reflected in built structures.

Florian Graf explores the connection between spatial reality and pictorial imagination, dealing with important topics of our time, such as sustainability, nature and globalization just as spirituality, sexuality or psychology of perception. He creates sculptures, images and site-responsive projects that captivate with their poetic energy and inspire dialogue and exchange. The art critic Michael Newman aptly writes: "Graf’s art is utopian not by projecting a future that is different from the present, but by making the present different from itself."