Anna Plesset
b. 1977, Mt. Kisco, NY. Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Anna Plesset is an interdisciplinary artist who uses painting, sculpture, and drawing to reframe familiar historical narratives and examine how history, memory, and knowledge are constructed and mediated.
Recently, her work was featured in New York in group exhibitions at Jack Barrett and JDJ | The Ice House; and in solo exhibitions at PATRON in Chicago, Hunter Harrison Gallery in London, and The Armory Show 2020 with Jack Barrett in New York. In 2016, Plesset was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant. Additional awards and residencies include the Terra Foundation for American Art Summer Residency Fellowship in Giverny, France and the AIRspace residency program at Abrons Arts Center in New York City. Plesset’s work has been written about and reviewed in The New York Times, Artforum, T Magazine, Hyperallergic, frieze, ARTnews, Cultured, Bomb Magazine, Modern Painters, Time Out, and The Brooklyn Rail. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Artist Statement: "Through painting, drawing, and sculpture, my work engages personal and shared histories to examine how history, memory, and knowledge are constructed and mediated. While research-based and conceptually driven, my work is grounded in traditional painting techniques. In particular, the history of trompe l’oeil painting influences me in its capacity to challenge perceptions of culture, society, and daily life through the illusionistic representation of quotidian objects. Drawing on this legacy through multiple lenses—whether focused on the absence of women from the art historical canon or the integration of trauma into everyday life—my work reframes familiar historical narratives to reveal that which has been hidden by erasure, translation, discrimination, and time.
My work is driven by my deep interest in overlooked narratives that exist within primary accounts of the past. For example, my current work reframes the history of the Hudson River School to give visibility to the many women affiliated with this iconic movement historically associated with men. Utilizing painting and sculpture, this project gives significance and exposure to paintings created by these women that have been undervalued, under-recognized, and in some cases, lost.
Another recent project, “Various Records,” utilizes a variety of approaches to look at the physical and psychological relationships between war, trauma, suffering and everyday life through multiple records: a film my Jewish grandfather made while serving in World War II as a psychiatrist, the record of my own journey retracing his path through Europe, and the familiar narrative of World War II constructed by institutions, books, and other media." (Anna Plesset)
Anna Plesset is an interdisciplinary artist who uses painting, sculpture, and drawing to reframe familiar historical narratives and examine how history, memory, and knowledge are constructed and mediated.
Recently, her work was featured in New York in group exhibitions at Jack Barrett and JDJ | The Ice House; and in solo exhibitions at PATRON in Chicago, Hunter Harrison Gallery in London, and The Armory Show 2020 with Jack Barrett in New York. In 2016, Plesset was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant. Additional awards and residencies include the Terra Foundation for American Art Summer Residency Fellowship in Giverny, France and the AIRspace residency program at Abrons Arts Center in New York City. Plesset’s work has been written about and reviewed in The New York Times, Artforum, T Magazine, Hyperallergic, frieze, ARTnews, Cultured, Bomb Magazine, Modern Painters, Time Out, and The Brooklyn Rail. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Artist Statement: "Through painting, drawing, and sculpture, my work engages personal and shared histories to examine how history, memory, and knowledge are constructed and mediated. While research-based and conceptually driven, my work is grounded in traditional painting techniques. In particular, the history of trompe l’oeil painting influences me in its capacity to challenge perceptions of culture, society, and daily life through the illusionistic representation of quotidian objects. Drawing on this legacy through multiple lenses—whether focused on the absence of women from the art historical canon or the integration of trauma into everyday life—my work reframes familiar historical narratives to reveal that which has been hidden by erasure, translation, discrimination, and time.
My work is driven by my deep interest in overlooked narratives that exist within primary accounts of the past. For example, my current work reframes the history of the Hudson River School to give visibility to the many women affiliated with this iconic movement historically associated with men. Utilizing painting and sculpture, this project gives significance and exposure to paintings created by these women that have been undervalued, under-recognized, and in some cases, lost.
Another recent project, “Various Records,” utilizes a variety of approaches to look at the physical and psychological relationships between war, trauma, suffering and everyday life through multiple records: a film my Jewish grandfather made while serving in World War II as a psychiatrist, the record of my own journey retracing his path through Europe, and the familiar narrative of World War II constructed by institutions, books, and other media." (Anna Plesset)
Anna Plesset | Dollar's Climb: A1, The Globe and Mail, Saturday, Nov. 3, 2007 | 2009 | Pencil and masking tape on paper | 11 3/8 x 12 in.