Cynthia Daignault “As I Lay Dying”

Kasmin (297 10th Ave.)

[Image: Cynthia Daignault "Gettysburg (Stereoscopic)" (2021) oil on linen, 30 x 60 in. Courtesy of the artist.]

This event has ended.

Cynthia Daignault’s first solo exhibition at Kasmin explores the subject of Gettysburg National Military Park to propose a contemporary response to the genre of history painting. The exhibition expands on the artist’s earlier Light Atlas and Elegy series, investigating concepts of monument, memory, and the shifting experience of the natural world.

As I Lay Dying includes wide-ranging depictions of the battlefields and woodlands of the park, as well as paintings of text drawn from Lincoln’s historic address, and ghostly nocturnes of Civil War monuments. Daignault’s approach is a rumination on the meaning of site and time—time elapsed since the battle, time spent walking its fields, and time shared between the viewer and the work.

History painting, for Daignault, is an act of poetry. In this, her approach recalls the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who engaged with political history through the creation of quiet, specific and powerful metaphors. Just as in an imagist poem, each work is a concrete, uncluttered response to the pathos of Gettysburg.

Daignault presents a work on the same themes at the fifth New Museum Triennial, titled Soft Water, Hard Stone, on view through January 23, 2022.