Cynthia Daignault
Sunday, 22 January 2012
Work from her oeuvre.
“…Daignault’s paintings, or visual tautologies, are rendered in a not-quite photo-realistic manner – akin to that of, say, Vija Celmins or Luc Tuymans. They include depictions of analogue and digital projection equipment (e.g. slide projectors, overhead projectors, video projectors, etc.) that are paired with painted representations of their projected images. For example a painting of an overhead projector is paired with a painted image of a projected text taken from Beckett’s ‘Molloy’. These paired canvases, installed in direct formal relationship to one another, establish plausible but unstable illusions.
Daignault’s paintings amplify the sense of artifice inherent not only in the presentation of art but also with regard to painting’s own slippery relationship with reality itself. In other works, such as her painted takes on iconic modernist furniture – of the kind still to be found in certain gallery and museum settings – Daignault amplifies, and gently subverts the aesthetic codes and social hierarchies associated with these universal symbols of good taste.
Taking the potential of mimicry to its logical conclusion Daignault has painted, to scale, a version of White Columns’ ‘Bulletin Board’ project space. Daignault’s painted version has temporarily displaced the actual bulletin board that is usually to be found in the gallery’s lobby area, creating in turn a kind of aesthetic ‘double-take’ that plays on the visitor’s own relationship with White Columns’ history and its programs…” – White Columns Gallery