Cynthia Daignault

In collaboration with: Cory Arcangel, Conor Backman, Sadie Barnette, Jason Bereswill, Todd Bienvenu, Carol Bove, Canyon Castator, Sara Cwynar, Andy Coolquitt, TM Davy, Peter Dreher, Jessica Eaton, Gregory Edwards, Awol Erizku, Roe Ethridge, Robert Gober, Josephine Halvorson, Anthea Hamilton, Matthew Hansel, Peter Harkawik, Daniel Heidkamp, Matthew Higgs, Jim Hodges, John Houck, Paul Jacobsen, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Margaret Lee, Chason Matthams, Allan McCollum, Josephine Meckseper, Jonathan Monk, Roula Partheniou, Richard Phillips, Charles Ray, Magali Reus, Jenna Rosenberg, Ed Ruscha, Tom Sachs, Erin Shirreff, Lorna Simpson, Tristan Unrau, Dylan Vandenhoeck, Julia Wachtel, Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, Fred Wilson, and Letha Wilson

The Flag Art Foundation presents Cynthia Daignault: There Is Nothing I Could Say That I Haven’t Thought Before. Daignault’s new series of paintings – part solo exhibition, virtual group show, and curatorial project – is a collaboration with 36 artists exploring ideas of agency, appropriation, and the traces we leave behind.

Daignault has experimented with collaboration throughout her career, often asking artists, curators, and volunteers to share in the creation of her work. In that spirit, she initiated this exhibition at Flag, inviting artists who explore themes of appropriation, readymades, and display to participate in a group show, where she would make and exhibit painted copies of their works in lieu of the actual objects. As it is now more common to encounter a digital surrogate than a physical artwork, Daignault painted from JPEGs, rendering the simulacra as paintings. The artist suggests that: “To make any copy is to perform a shadow dance where the artist mimics and mirrors their subject.”

At the heart of each artwork is an act of appropriation, yet one in which Daignault has re-empowered the artists being referenced by granting them the permission to say no and the agency to choose. She recasts appropriation as collaboration and reverses the power dynamic of a nihilistic approach where all images are rights-free and up for grabs. Each finished painting is a hybrid of two practices and styles—an exchange between artists—a fact Daignault highlights by giving the artists a small painted copy of their work. The artist continues her use of serial forms, with these works all created in traditional portrait scale, and presented in a linear non-hierarchical installation, forging meaning across the group of images as a whole.

There is nothing I could say that I haven’t thought before was originally presented at Stems Gallery in Brussels, Belgium, just after the terrorist attacks in 2016, which brought all of Belgium to a stand-still. With the opportunity to bring the project to New York, Daignault expanded the exhibition from 20 to 36 artworks. This exhibition is the first time the entire series of works will be shown together.

Also on view on Flag’s 10th floor, Cynthia Daignault presents The Certainty of Others, 2017, an exhibition for which she invited 12 contemporary representational painters – Conor Backman, Jason Bereswill, Todd Bienvenu, Canyon Castator, TM Davy, Gregory Edwards, Matthew Hansel, Daniel Heidkamp, Paul Jacobsen, Chason Matthams, Tristan Unrau, and Dylan Vandenhoeck – to each produce a surrogate of her still life, Everyone you ever loved will someday die, 2015. In an inverse of the main gallery exhibition, in which a broad spectrum of work is filtered through one artist, The Certainty of Others takes one artist’s work and expands it horizontally, creating a new 12-part installation that manifests and reimagines one of Daignault’s paintings, which was intentionally destroyed during a performance last year. Daignault stated: “As any artwork is an extension of the self, for this project I chose peers to re-embody one of my works, and I intentionally chose male painters in an enactment of collaborative consent and co-authorship – connecting back with those core ideas from the main gallery show.”

Cynthia Daignault (b. 1978) is an artist living in working in Baltimore, MD, and New York, NY. Daignault received a BA from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, in 2001, was a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and was the recipient of a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant. She has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including There is nothing I could say that I haven’t thought before, Stems Gallery, Brussels, Belgium (2016); Light Atlas, Lisa Cooley, New York, NY (2015); Home, This must be the place, Rowhouse Project, Baltimore, MD (2015); among others. Her paintings have been included in major museum group exhibitions, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2015); the Fort Worth Modern (2014); the Brooklyn Museum (2014); and many others. In 2017, Daignault will be exhibiting at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; MASS MOCA, North Adams, MA; Capital Gallery, San Francisco, CA; and the Herron Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN.