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Elisheva Biernoff (born 1980) is an American artist.

Early life and education

Biernoff was born in Albuquerque in 1980. In 2002 she graduated from Yale. In 2007 she moved to San Francisco, and in 2009 received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the California College of the Arts.

Career

Biernoff is known for her detailed painted recreations of found vintage snapshot photographs, including photographic artefacts such as lens flare or overexposure, or physical details such as water damage to the photo paper. She started creating these paintings when she was asked to create an installation for a storefront window in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighbourhood of San Francisco in 2009. As she didn't know anyone in that area of the city, she asked local residents for any pictures of family members they could share, as a way to familiarize herself with the neighbourhood. Her first painted photograph reproductions were made from these images, and exhibited in the storefront as what she called a "community living-room wall".

So photorealistic are Biernoff's works that in 2015, artist Cynthia Daignault accidentally appropriated an image of a painting by Biernoff, of a vintage postcard, for her own project, The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter. Daignault found an image of the painting via Google image search and, thinking it to be a photo of an actual vintage postcard, used it to promote her project, which involved painting landscapes from life on postcards. Diagnault immediately apologised, acknowledging the mistake via her newsletter the same day.

From 2015 to 2016 Biernoff was artist in residence at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire.

Biernoff is represented by Fraenkel Gallery, and her work is in the collections of galleries including the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Yale University Art Gallery.

References

1. ^ Als, Hilton (2024-10-18). "Elisheva Biernoff's Family of Man". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2024-12-20.
2. Kost, By Ryan (2017-06-12). "In detailed re-creations, an artist forges connections". SFGATE. Retrieved 2024-12-20.
3. Porges, Maria (2024-12-01). "Elisheva Biernoff". Artforum. Retrieved 2024-12-20.
4. Boucher, Brian (2015-03-10). "Cynthia Daignault Accidentally Stole Elisheva Biernoff's Painting". Artnet News. Retrieved 2025-01-02.
5. ^ "Elisheva Biernoff". Fraenkel Gallery. Retrieved 2025-01-02.
6. "Biernoff CV 2024" (PDF). Fraenkel Gallery. Retrieved 2025-01-02.
7. Biernoff, Elisheva (2016), Spring, Metropolitan Museum of Art, retrieved 2025-01-02

• 21st-century American women artists
• California College of the Arts alumni
• Yale University alumni
• Artists from Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Living people
• 1980 births