Always After Now is among the first nine figurative sculptures Gibson ever made, and one of only two executed entirely in black and white; a restraint that gives the work an unusual gravity within a body of practice otherwise defined by chromatic exuberance. Completed in 2014, the work arrived at a pivotal moment in Gibson's career, before the institutional recognition that would follow: the MacArthur Fellowship, the Denver Art Museum survey, and ultimately his selection as the first Native American artist to represent the United States solo at the Venice Biennale in 2024. Each of the nine early figures was presented on a base composed of found wood, raw, contingent, site-specific in spirit, and the materials that clad the figure here carry the full weight of Gibson's dual inheritance: tin jingles and glass beads drawn from Choctaw regalia, a wool army blanket evoking both military history and Indigenous craft traditions. The Drusy crystal embedded at the head functions as a singular eye or portal, a focal point that anchors the work's accumulated surfaces in something ceremonial and still.