Next time you're outside, stop for a moment, look around and count how many words you see: slogans, street signs, corporate logos, advertisements, business names - commercial branding is everywhere.
Click here to see Graf's Hidden Town series.
It's difficult to properly appreciate the impact of language on the modern urban landscape because it is so ubiquitous and commonplace. Our eyes become accustomed to the information clutter and the character of a city street or a busy corner gradually comes to be defined not only by its architecture, colour, or location but by a prominent billboard overhead, or a recognisable shop name highlighted in bright neon letters.
But what would our streets feel like without the clutter? Gregor Graf addresses this very question with his photographs, leaving familiar streetscapes virtually unrecognisable.
Utilizing digital editing software the Linz-based artist chronicles a variety of cityscapes, in London, Linz and Warsaw, rendered eerily stark and almost culturally neutral, by the removal of all traces of language and signage. The photographs are extraordinarily impactful through the absence of the detritus we subconsciously take for granted.
The resulting structures look a little like architecture models, lifeless and plastic, and compel us to think twice about the ways in which we define our environment. Graf's current exhibition, Hidden Town, showcases his London series of photographs (four images) as well as a collection of new portraits of American businessmen completed during his recent residency in Chicago.
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- Website
- http://www.gregorgraf.net
- Telephone
- 44.20 7225 7300
- Address
- Austrian Cultural Institute
28 Rutland Gate
London SW7 1PQ
