Remote Control 2025 350 x 450 mm

ARTIST STATEMENT

A key element of Narbey’s art practice is the process of layering. She works intuitively with stencils to create shapes or chaotic lines, markings, and areas of intense color, building textured surfaces by masking and covering areas of pigment. This layering technique plays with our perception, vision, and focus, encouraging viewers to delve into a deeper introspection and create the idea of grasping and holding on to fragments of dreams, memories and stories.

The ambiguity within her work fosters a sense of ongoing interpretation, as the viewer’s gaze oscillates between the familiar and the unknown. Narbey’s interest in pareidolia—the tendency of the human mind to find patterns and faces in seemingly random images—forms a significant part of her approach, evoking a psychological exploration of recognition, memory, and form.

The textures and layers function as symbols of both the mundane and the significant, suggesting the interconnectedness of all things and the marks we leave behind as we navigate through time. Narbey’s fascination with maps and landforms—winding roads, riverbeds, and topographical lines—mirrors this interconnectedness. These maps, which she first encountered as a child tracing the pages of the family atlas, become a metaphor for journeys, histories, and the continuous flow of change, much like the shifting landscapes of human identity.

The connections between technology and nature play a central role in her practice, particularly her fascination with sci-fi, space exploration, and planetary landscapes, and raise questions about human identity, perception, and our search for meaning in the vast, unknowable universe. In this, Narbey’s work challenges us to reflect on the ways we construct meaning amidst flux and change.

At the heart of Narbey’s paintings lies an ongoing meditation on the fragility of our lives, memory and the passage of time. Her works evoke a contemplative, otherworldly quality that blurs the boundaries between abstraction and representational. Her work represents the landscape of the mind, offering viewers an introspective journey through their thoughts and emotions.