Elena Narbutaitė. Dools, Carré d’Art-Musée d’art contemporain de Nimes, France, 2018 photography by C. Eymenier

Elena Narbutaitė (born 1984) creates abstract signs of specific phenomena. Her works – sculptures, installations and prints – have their own stories and deep conceptual roots but are best revealed in a moment of wonder.  

As is typical of the creators of her generation, Narbutaitė’s work begins at the confluence of various cultural influences. However, the most important part of this process is the artist’s own intervention, which removes the filter of reality from the phenomena in focus and reveals their innate strangeness. Sometimes pure colour is enough to achieve this effect, as in the Xerox print series ‘Roberts, Joseph, or Married Man’ (2018). She works with technologies whose supposedly programmed objectivity should simplify the perception of the world but in reality only creates even more paradoxes. The ephemerality of works using laser and light, such as ‘Wind’ (2017), ‘C’ (2017), and ‘Feyon’ (2015), is only made possible by relying on sophisticated means of production and physics. Narbutaitė’s works exhibit a degree of toughness, which forces the audience to take the jokes implied in them seriously. The paper sculpture series ‘Dools’ (since 2017) exhibits monumental objects – fake clothes for a fake body, folded for the first time at dusk and providing a contrast with their own delicate nature.  

Elena Narbutaitė has organized solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius and the Carré d’Art – Museum of Contemporary Art in Nimes. She has participated in the Liverpool Biennial (2016) and at the Lithuania and Cyprus pavilion at the Venice Biennial (2013). The artist’s works have been shown in group exhibitions at CRAC Alsace in Altkirch (France), Tate St Ives in the United Kingdom, Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong, Parque Lage Visual Art School in Rio de Janeiro, Vigo Museum of Contemporary Art (MARCO) in Spain, and elsewhere. Narbutaitė is also an active contributor to periodicals such as The Federal, Nero, and Bill Magazine, where she also works as a co-editor.  

The artist is represented by Galería PM8 in Vigo, Spain: https://www.pm8galeria.com/