ELISHEVA BIERNOFF: ELSEWHERE
DAVID ZWIRNER is pleased to announce an exhibition of paintings by San Francisco–based artist Elisheva Biernoff (b. 1980) at the gallery’s 34 East 69th Street location in New York, marking her first solo show on the East Coast.
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 that explore the rich historical tradition of the trompe l’oeil. 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.
“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
All quotes featured throughout this page are from Biernoff’s recent written artist statement.
Individually mounted on handmade poplar stands, the resultant images are activated by the viewer’s close looking and emotional connection, yet they are also imbued with an inexorable sense of distance—a longing for another place, face, or moment in one’s life.
“In painting found photographs, I become absorbed in one instant of someone else’s life, something deep, individual, and specific, but also something I relate to, that’s open and universal. The project started out of an impulse to rescue these mysterious and sympathetic castaways that are so small, and so full of poetry.”
Biernoff’s work was the subject of the recent solo exhibition Reservoirs of Time at the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, and the two-person exhibition Lost and Found: Elisheva Biernoff and Floris Schönfeld at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa, California. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and more.
The artist’s work is held in permanent collections worldwide, including the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, and the Hammer Museum, among others.
“In choosing a photograph to paint, I always look for an element of the unexpected, something that comes at beauty sideways. Sometimes that takes the form of an unusual vantage point or shift in focus, while other photos reveal overt mistakes in the photography or development process: fading, light leaks, emulsion lifting off. The interruption afforded by these outtakes intrudes so completely on the picture that it becomes a subject in its own right.”