Opening Tonight | Cynthia Daignault and Judith Bernstein. Kasmin. NYC

Cynthia Daignault’s first solo exhibition at Kasmin, As I Lay Dying, opens tonight at 297 Tenth Avenue. The exhibition explores the subject of Gettysburg National Military Park to propose a contemporary response to the genre of history painting, and investigates concepts of monument, memory, and the shifting experience of the natural world.

For Daignault landscape is witness, and she draws parallels between the environmental setting and the mechanical act of seeing. Her investigation into optics further acts as a metaphor for the polarities at the heart of American life and the reverberations of historical trauma.

Opening tonight at 514 West 28th Street, GASLIGTING FOREVER by Judith Bernstein presents a series of large-scale paintings that represent the culmination of over a half-century’s commitment to confronting the injustices of power and politics within a sexual lens.

“Gaslighting” is a term coined by the 1944 thriller “Gaslight,” featuring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. Referencing the movie’s plot, it has since come into popular lexicon to describe a situation wherein an abuser encourages their target to question and undermine their judgment and sanity. Gaslighting is a psychological battleground relating to toxic power dynamics, pervasive across personal and political realms. An insightful subtlety in Judith’s series is her intentional misspelling of “Gasligting” in each painting, removing the “h,” so that the viewer is prompted to momentarily question their own sanity.

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