ELISHEVA BIERNOFF: ELSEWHERE

DAVID ZWIRNER is pleased to announce an exhibition of paintings by San Francisco–based artist Elisheva Biernoff at the gallery’s 34 East 69th Street location in New York.

January 8 - February 28, 2026

This presentation spans Biernoff’s career, featuring a representative selection of her intimately scaled paintings as well as examples from her recent body of larger-format multimedia compositions.

Exploring the slippage that occurs between the experience of reality and the memories that remain after the fact, Biernoff’s poignant and visually captivating paintings serve as, in the artist’s words, “reservoirs of time.”

Working with meticulous fidelity and care, Elisheva Biernoff uses fine, luminous brushstrokes to create intricately painted depictions of anonymous photographs, which she sources from antique stores and online marketplaces. She paints on paper-thin plywood, replicating each detail and blemish, front and back, from the original object in a methodical process that is deeply deliberate and reflective; the artist only produces around four works each year.

While nodding to the pleasant, nostalgic aesthetic and commercial kitsch of the scenes found in these do-it-yourself paintings, the work also draws a parallel between the democratization of imagemaking proffered by both these craft kits and the medium of home photography.

“As a child, I loved looking at my parents’ old photo albums because they could bring me face to face with people and places from the past.... [But] I wanted to know more than a photo could possibly record and deliver. That tension—connection tinged with deprivation, a contact that constantly recedes—continues to draw me to old snapshots.”

- Elisheva Biernoff