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Now What? Or What Else?: Perrotin, Paris ,

Sep 6 - Oct 11, 2025

Now What? Or What Else?: Perrotin, Paris

Current exhibition
  • Installation Shots
  • Press release
  • Installation Shots
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  • Press Release Text

    The fire has already started. The flood has already come. We saw the alerts, we made the images, we sounded the alarms. And still, here we are. Scrolling. Sleeping. Drifting. Trying to make dinner.

    Perrotin Paris is proud to present Now What? Or What Else?, the debut solo exhibition in Paris by acclaimed American artist Nina Chanel Abney. Shaped by the emotional aftermath of sustained crisis, this new body of work speaks to what it feels like to live in a world where collapse is ongoing, not exceptional. The exhibition reflects not only ecological disaster, but the broader psychic toll of political dysfunction, cultural absurdity, and social fatigue. The environmental imagery functions less as documentation and more as metaphor. In the shadow of authoritarian resurgence, climate denial, and the normalization of chaos, the show quietly asks: how do we keep going?

    Abney’s practice has long blurred the lines between humor and horror, figuration and abstraction, public spectacle and private psychology. In this new series, her bold, graphic compositions depict a surreal kind of everyday life: couples in bed beside mounds of laundry, picnics unfolding in poisoned air, grocery carts filled with existential dread. Forests burn in the background. Oil rigs sit just beyond the beach. Sunbathers float beside dead fish. The world continues, but something is deeply off. And no one flinches.

    Rather than capturing catastrophe at its peak, Now What? Or What Else? turns inward. It centers the dullness, detachment, and quiet repetition that now define our shared emotional climate. The urgency has shifted. People know too much and feel too little. These paintings do not scream. They linger. They witness. They endure.

    If French surrealism once used dream logic to unlock unconscious desire, Abney’s work uses daily life to expose an equally irrational world. Her compositions echo the strangeness of modern existence: emoji-like faces with no expression, danger dressed up as design, bright colors hiding exhaustion. The result is a visual language that feels familiar yet unnerving, playful but disquieting.

     Now What? Or What Else? is not a call to action. It is a portrait of emotional survival. These are not scenes of crisis, but of living through it. Not with clarity or resolve, but with confusion, numbness, small acts of care, and quiet resignation.

     This is not the beginning of the end. It is somewhere in the middle.

    After the noise. Before the reckoning.

    When the question is no longer what’s happening,

    But: Now what? Or what else?

     

    This is now a breaking point. It is the blur that follows. After the urgency fades. Before the truth sets in. A world numbed by repetition, still pretending to function. Everything is normal, and nothing is right.

  • Works
    • Find Me in The Fine Print , 2025 Relief print 62 3/8" x 29 1/4"
      Find Me in The Fine Print , 2025
      Relief print
      62 3/8" x 29 1/4"
    • And Then Came Night , 2025 Relief in print 62 3/4 x 46 7/8"
      And Then Came Night , 2025
      Relief in print
      62 3/4 x 46 7/8"
    • Catch and Release, 2025 Relief in print 62 5/8" x 46 1/2"
      Catch and Release, 2025
      Relief in print
      62 5/8" x 46 1/2"
    • Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom! , 2025 Relief print 65 5/8 x 46 1/2"
      Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom! , 2025
      Relief print
      65 5/8 x 46 1/2"
    • The Sky Turned Orange, 2025 Relief print 62 5/8" x 46 1/2"
      The Sky Turned Orange, 2025
      Relief print
      62 5/8" x 46 1/2"
    • Look at Those Low Rates , 2025 Relief print 65 5/8 x 46 1/2"
      Look at Those Low Rates , 2025
      Relief print
      65 5/8 x 46 1/2"
    • The Bear Minimum , 2025 Relief print 62 3/4 x 46 5/8"
      The Bear Minimum , 2025
      Relief print
      62 3/4 x 46 5/8"
    • Double Exposure, 2025 Relief print 46 1/2 x 62 1 /2"
      Double Exposure, 2025
      Relief print
      46 1/2 x 62 1 /2"
    • Tag Yourself, 2025 Relief print 46 5/8 x 62 1/2"
      Tag Yourself, 2025
      Relief print
      46 5/8 x 62 1/2"
    • All Day It Burned , 2025 Relief Print
      All Day It Burned , 2025
      Relief Print
    • Make It Enough, 2025 Relief print
      Make It Enough, 2025
      Relief print
    • Toss and Turn, 2025 Acrylic and spray paint on canvas 84 x 84"
      Toss and Turn, 2025
      Acrylic and spray paint on canvas
      84 x 84"
    • #WillHeDoIt, 2025 Acrylic and spray paint on canvas 48 x 72"
      #WillHeDoIt, 2025
      Acrylic and spray paint on canvas
      48 x 72"
    • Getting Caucasity, 2025 Acrylic and spray paint on canvas 48 x 84"
      Getting Caucasity, 2025
      Acrylic and spray paint on canvas
      48 x 84"
    • Shit, Shower, Shave, 2025 Acrylic and spray paint on canvas 72 x 60"
      Shit, Shower, Shave, 2025
      Acrylic and spray paint on canvas
      72 x 60"
    • Epsom Salty, 2025 Acrylic and spray paint on canvas 72 x 72"
      Epsom Salty, 2025
      Acrylic and spray paint on canvas
      72 x 72"
    • En El Super Mercado, 2025 Acrylic and spray paint on canvas 84 x 60"
      En El Super Mercado, 2025
      Acrylic and spray paint on canvas
      84 x 60"
    • Plant Parenthood, 2025 Acrylic and spray paint on canvas 60 x 84"
      Plant Parenthood, 2025
      Acrylic and spray paint on canvas
      60 x 84"
    • Feel The Burn, 2025 Acrylic and spray paint on canvas 72 x 60"
      Feel The Burn, 2025
      Acrylic and spray paint on canvas
      72 x 60"
    • When You Are Black You Are Never Really Alone, 2025 Acrylic and spray paint on canvas 72 x 60"
      When You Are Black You Are Never Really Alone, 2025
      Acrylic and spray paint on canvas
      72 x 60"
    • American Dreamin', 2025 Acrylic and spray paint on canvas 48 x 84"
      American Dreamin', 2025
      Acrylic and spray paint on canvas
      48 x 84"
    • Booked and Busy, 2025 Acrylic and spray paint 72 x 60"
      Booked and Busy, 2025
      Acrylic and spray paint
      72 x 60"
    • Read It and Weep, 2025 Acrylic and spray paint on canvas 72 x 60"
      Read It and Weep, 2025
      Acrylic and spray paint on canvas
      72 x 60"
    • Laying Low, 2025 Acrylic and spray paint on canvas 60 x 72"
      Laying Low, 2025
      Acrylic and spray paint on canvas
      60 x 72"
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