Having been influenced by the psychoanalytical traditions of Freud and Jung, and scientific methods, Graff, regularly addresses in his work themes of identity, concealment, memory and a secular conception of the sacred.
In-depth research led Graff to develop Alter Egos such as the scientist ‘Professore’ and the ethno-botanist Dr Albert Frique.
Selected exhibitions include: Galleria Mucciaccia, Rome (2018); Almine Rech Gallery, in London (2016); The Musée d’Art Modern et Contemporain in Nice, France (2013); the Ercel Foundation in Turin, Italy (2010); the Operating Room, Amerikan Hastanesi, Istanbul (2010); the Musee de Marrakech, Morocco (2004); and the Museum of Mankind in London (1991).
[9] Graff utilised a restricted palette of greys and earth tones, with the thick layers of "indigenous media" which he intended to be evocative of cave walls.
[12] David Cohen reviewed the exhibition in ‘Contemporary Art’: "His new sculptural works explore similar borderline territory between the animate and the static, the sensual and the morbid.
"[12] Some sculptures interpreted the theme of mummification by incorporating personal objects, wrapped and preserved in numerous burnt linen packages and embedded in earth panels, which the artist viewed as resembling tribal burial grounds or rows of Egyptian Shabti figures.
[13] "Following the Surrealists’ devotion to ethnography"(Pieroni),[14] Graff was interested in forms of constriction evident in tribal or cultural practices, such as the neck extending rings of the Padaung people of South East Asia, and Chinese foot binding.
[8][13][15] Graff explained in an interview in Australian Magazine ‘Black +White’, 1995, "...that the figures are naked is very similar to Houdini’s performances – he would undress in front of his audience and be tied up.
[8] [15] The critic Caroline Smith observed that Graff was among a number of photographers seeking to question the relationship between art and pornography.
[11] In 2008, Graff created a photographic body of work featuring his alter ego ‘Professore’ as a vehicle to question what he perceived as society's “innate trust in science”.
[17][21] Working primarily with photography, and also with painting, collage, sculpture, installation, sound and video, Graff created pseudo-scientific conditions within a fictive “laboratory”.
[18] Graff said in an interview "On the surface, [Professore] appears like a genius, but once scrutinised we can realise that his experiments are nonsensical and likely to end in complete failure!".
[17] Graff aimed to treat depictions of ‘Professore’ with a degree of humour,[21] while presenting him as a character with a quest to expand human knowledge.
[17][22] A review of a 2012 exhibition at Galerie Odile Ouizeman [23] by Phillipe Dagen appeared in Le Monde, commenting on "allusions to Duchamp, Ernst, and also the cinema of the 1920s and 1960s performance art...".
[18] In his video work ‘Experiments in the Phenomena of Existence’ (2010), Graff, in the role of ‘Professore’, directed strangers he encountered in streets, or in Turkish coffee houses (kiraathane), often successfully choreographing “absurd” body articulations and movements, sometimes using pseudo-scientific instruments on members of the public.