Franz Graf
:
Mural in the Government District
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The two-stage competition provided the background to the artistic intervention in St. Pölten, for which seven artworks by Austrian artists were recommended for realisation. These projects are by Josef Danner, Bruno Gironcoli, Richard Hoeck, Hans Kupelwieser, Christoph Steffner, Thomas Stimm and Heimo Zobernig. Five commissions for interiors were awarded directly, to Gunter Damisch, Franz Graf, Brigitte Kowanz, Eva Schlegel and Walter Vopava. The winning project in a separate competition for the design of the chapel (1995) is by Arnulf Rainer. Additional existing artworks by Franz Xaver Ölzant, Oskar Putz and Ruth Schnell are also to be found in the Regierungsviertel. Works by Dara Birnbaum and Michelangelo Pistoletto, also selected by the first jury, are not realized.
As in other works by Franz Graf, there is a calculated reference to the architectural setting and despite the fact that the piece has been placed in an indoor space it has a "structuring" effect on the building and the courtyard from which it is readily visible at night in particular but also during the day with the right lighting. A circular ornament with a white center emerges from a black wall. Its pictorical quality, if not monumentality, corresponds to other abstract and geometric expressions employed by the artist, passing on his specific focus on the circular form to the architectural setting. Here the ornament is to be seen as an important modernist pictorial element in the western context, while at the same time its "eastern" symbols make it allude to other contexts and spiritual expectations. A decisive aspect is also the radicality of the large black surface that so sovereignly transcends the detailed furnishings with their diversity of materials, claiming from the outset its own space. However, what is possibly a meditative dimension is not negatively assessed within the total context in which the piece resembles a dialogue and is accessible.
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