Keiko Narahashi creates clay sculptures that spring from a conviction that forms carry emotional and psychological meaning. These shapes waver between the human and nonhuman, figure and landscape, and the ambiguities that permeate memories and daydreams. Her ongoing investigation of the transformations between two and three dimensions began when, as a child, she watched a tin can become flattened by a train.
Although she makes sculptural objects, she often thinks in picture planes like a painter. She builds primarily from clay slabs, drawing cut-lines directly onto the clay so that these drawings themselves become the sculpture. The sculptures often have a frontal quality that she uses to deliberately recall traditional presentations of paintings and photographs, such as in table top picture frames. There is a play with scale; intimations of vastness contained within these miniature worlds.