Anna Plesset | Various Records
Kenderdine Art Gallery 51 Campus Dr, 2nd level, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5A8
Anna Plesset, "Travelogue (21st Century Room)," 2013-2018
Interior detail: Oil on panel. Image courtesy of the artist.
Various Records utilizes a variety of approaches including video, trompe l’oeil painting, and sculpture to look at the physical and psychological relationships between war, trauma, suffering, and everyday life. Central to this work is a 24-minute video, in which the artist's grandfather, Lt. Col. Marvin R. Plesset, documented his experiences serving in World War II as a division psychiatrist. Following his arrival in Normandy in 1944, Lt. Col. Plesset traded a P38 pistol for a 16mm film camera and documented candid moments of leisure and everyday life alongside the dark aftermath of the war. Following her discovery of this film, Plesset began a journey of retracing her grandfather’s experience, using the film itself as a guide. Decades after the original film was produced, this exhibition acts as a record of the power and transformative agency of place, time, and memory through site and ephemera.
Anna Plesset is a New York-based artist who uses painting, sculpture, and drawing to reframe familiar historical narratives and examine how history, memory, and knowledge are constructed and mediated. Plesset holds an MFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI and a BFA in Painting from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
Curator's Tour: THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 24 AT 12 NOON