"The future no longer looked distant - it pressed closer, restless and uneasy, defined less by sudden collapse and more by the low, persistent hum of instability. Into that atmosphere arrived Now What? Or What Else?, Nina Chanel Abney's solo debut at Perrotin Paris. Opening September 6 and running through October 11, the exhibition marked Abney's first major outing with the French gallery, where she used her signature bold, graphic language to grapple with the dysfunction saturating ecological, political, and cultural life."
"Abney's new body of work refused the spectacle of disaster at its peak. Instead, she turned her attention to what happens in the aftermath - or in the lulls between. Her canvases depicted not the explosions of catastrophe but the quieter moments where dread became background noise. Couples lounged in bed beside towers of unfolded laundry, beachgoers swam among lifeless fish, and forests blazed at the edge of otherwise cheerful gatherings."
Nina Chanel Abney uses bold, graphic language and saturated colors to portray a world where crisis is constant. Her canvases focus on aftermaths and everyday moments—lounging couples, beachgoers among lifeless fish, forests blazing beside cheerful gatherings—conveying dread as background noise. The work fuses playful, cartoon-like forms with disquieting subject matter, creating an intentionally disorienting effect. Brightness and humor co-exist with numbness and persistence, prompting questions about how people continue living amid ongoing environmental, political, and cultural dysfunction. Scenes of domestic routine and leisure become measures of resilience and normalization, showing survival habits rather than spectacle of collapse, and asking what social endurance looks like.
#nina-chanel-abney #contemporary-art #environmental-collapse #political-dysfunction #humor-and-disquiet
Read at stupidDOPE | Est. 2008
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