Nina Chanel Abney Paints a Portrait of the New, Strange Normal
For her Paris solo debut at Perrotin, the artist interrogates what it means to survive in a time of never-ending crisis.
Summary
- Nina Chanel Abney’s Now What? Or What Else? will be on view at Perrotin Paris from September 6 through October 11
- Her first show with Perrotin since announcing her representation, this latest body of work explores what it means to survive amidst emotional aftermath of chaos and the shared experience of disaster that has come to define our everyday
The future feels closer now — uncertain, uneasy and not nearly as far as we once thought it to be. Our times are some defined by collapse, not as a singular rupture, but rather a low, drowning hum that undergirds the everyday.
Enter: Now What? Or What Else?, Nina Chanel Abney‘s forthcoming solo debut at Perrotin Paris, fresh off her representation by the French gallery. In this new suite of works, Abney turns her attention towards dysfunction across ecological, political and cultural lines. In a time where disaster is no longer “exceptional,” she poses a harder question: how do we shoulder on?
Rather than depicting catastrophe at its climax, Abney focuses on the numbness, detachment and repetition that has come to define our emotional climate: couples cuddle in bed beside mountains of laundry, beachgoers swim in the company of dead fish, forests burn in the background of happy gatherings. Painting the tension between horror and humor with bold, graphic splendor, this body of work exposes how even the most ordinary moments can bear the weight of an irrational world.
“Now What? Or What Else? is not a call to action. It is a portrait of emotional survival,” the gallery wrote. “This is not the beginning of the end. It is somewhere in the middle. After the noise. Before the reckoning.”
The exhibition will be on view in Paris from September 6 through October 11. Head to the gallery’s website for more information.
Perrotin Paris
76 Rue de Turenne,
75003 Paris
