Out of all the painters associated with Narrative Figuration, Monory was undoubtedly the only one to be wholly narrative. At times hyperrealist, the enigmatic scenes he painted and juxtaposed seem to form the haunted logbook of a painter who every day questioned the reality of the world. The blue that made him famous, whether monochrome or associated with other colours of the spectrum, is the colour of this doubt. It acts as a dreamlike veil and distancing mechanism.

Borrowing from the cinema, and in particular from 1950s thrillers, as well as from photography, Monory's paintings, often in large format and frequently incorporating objects, form a kind of accelerated merry-go-round: in them, urban landscapes and vast expanses of nature, romantic visions and dramatic images from current affairs or contemporary history alternate or combine. A fundamental pessimism, tinged with dark humour, coexists in his work with a fascination for the void.

Monory does not give lessons; he asks both himself and us the question: how does one live in a violent, unreasonable, illogical, surprising and often fake world? His painting, the reflection of a modernity whose violence he exorcises by giving it free rein, still hits us full in the face today, like a very long film whose individual frames we would like to be able to isolate, while letting ourselves be swept away by the power of his merciless editing.