While Fabien Novarino’s portraits are undeniably contemporary, they seem deeply nourished by a multitude of references to past artistic movements. In the way he approaches the human face, one can sense echoes of 15th-century Flemish painting, where every detail carried profound, almost sacred meaning. Whereas Flemish masters like Jan van Eyck or Rogier van der Weyden sought to capture the world with near-scientific precision, Fabien moves away from this quest for perfection, using blur as an act of memory.

The torn paper, layered materials, and seemingly "imperfect" gestures reveal something deeply significant. Each element in his portraits, though often blurred or erased, retains a trace of what once was. The fragility of detail—so dear to the Flemish painters—finds here a new form of presence: less fixed, but just as meaningful. Through this deliberate absence of clarity, Fabien evokes a fragile, elusive world, filled with emotional depth.

If we move away from Flemish precision and turn toward German Expressionism, another facet of Fabien’s work emerges. Expressionist painters such as Egon Schiele or Emil Nolde possessed a unique ability to distort the face, turning it into a mirror of the soul—a landscape where emotion reshaped reality. Fabien seems to follow this idea as well, though in a more subtle way.

The face in his portraits is not a mere representation; it is a field of tension between what is seen and what remains hidden. What might appear to be a simple blur becomes a fracture where the intimate and the visible meet—an area where every emotion, every sensation, becomes palpable. The face becomes the expression of a silent struggle, not between the person and the outside world, but between the inner self and what can be revealed to the world.

In this exploration of the human face, Fabien Novarino also draws close to the Symbolists—artists like Odilon Redon or Fernand Khnopff—who saw the portrait not as a mirror, but as a doorway to the invisible. The figures in their work were often wrapped in ethereal mist, floating between the world of the living and the realm of spirits. Fabien pursues this same journey toward the unseen, but rather than making the ghostly presence visible, he lets it escape.

The blur that invades his portraits is not a meaningless distortion, but a passage between what is and what cannot be said, between what remains and what fades. Fabien’s portraits are never fully fixed—they remain in a constant state of transformation, as if the artist were not capturing a frozen moment, but rather an ongoing movement toward a reality just out of reach.

This exploration of the ephemeral and the invisible also finds a parallel in Art Brut, where the material itself becomes the vehicle for raw, uncompromising expression. Just as Dubuffet or Aloïse Corbaz used simple materials and spontaneous gestures to create works full of truth, Fabien, through his layered textures and process-led creation, seems to seek the liberation of the image from its constraints.

The pursuit of perfection is set aside in favor of a raw, authentic act—where the portrait becomes a field of experimentation. It is not beauty or polish that guides his hand, but the desire to reveal what lies beneath the surface, to make visible what escapes all aesthetic logic. In this space between the visible and the invisible, Fabien finds his truth.

Finally, one could also draw a connection with 1960s Japanese photography, particularly the Provoke movement, where blur and overexposure were used to convey a fragmented, uncertain reality. What distinguishes this approach from traditional painting is its ability to grasp the essence of a moment—to capture what is on the verge of disappearing.

Fabien Novarino, through his use of blur, echoes this aesthetic of the ephemeral. Each portrait becomes a suspended instant, a scar of the soul, a moment between two worlds, where the individual is both present and already out of reach. The blur, far from being a stylistic effect, becomes a way to express the fragility of existence—a reminder that everything we see is destined to fade.

Through these influences and invisible dialogues, Fabien Novarino does not seek to copy or reinvent tradition, but rather to extend what these great artistic movements initiated. Each portrait is a mosaic of artistic memories, where erasure, blur, distortion, and material become tools in a deeper search: to capture the human soul in its most elusive form.

His works are never static. They breathe, hesitate, transform. The subject is never entirely there, but always slipping away—merging into the viewer’s memory. Fabien’s portraits are thus imprints of an invisible world—witnesses to a reality the artist does not seek to control, but merely to brush against, in all its fragile beauty.

Souhaitez-vous une version plus condensée, ou adaptée pour un cartel de musée ou un communiqué de presse ?