Elisheva Biernoff Solo Show

Folly
Elisheva Biernoff Solo Show
September 10 – October 10, 2010
ArtForum Review

Triple Base is proud to announce Folly, a solo show of new work by San Francisco-based Elisheva Biernoff. Folly is an installation that reinvents the architectural follies (fanciful garden structures often in the form of ruins) of the 18th century. The main component of Folly is a trompe l’oeil “ruin” composed of two uneven walls, painted to evoke layers of peeling wallpaper. A window in one of the walls opens onto a flat screen television showing a time-lapse film of a darkening landscape. Vines painted in gouache on cut paper creep over the walls, and the ground is punctuated with bits of painted and sculpted debris. By assembling disparate pieces that mimic reality, Folly creates a fantasy world.

In the Triple Basement, Biernoff has created a paper sculpture titled Out the Window. This installation, using visual and audio elements, considers the reality of loss and the instinct to preserve. It celebrates the small things we overlook and the large things we undervalue, and meditates on the moments where nature and culture meet. Keeping in mind that the word ecology derives from “oikos,” the Greek word for household, this work considers how the home relates to the wider world, and how the wilderness is reintroduced into our homes.

Elisheva Biernoff was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1980. She attended Yale University, Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London, and received her MFA from California College of the Arts in 2009. Her most recent awards include the Kala Art Institute Fellowship and the 2008 Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship. Her 2010 exhibitions include 2 x 2 Solos: Elisheva Biernoff, ProArts, Oakland, CA and Front and Center: Weather Stream, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA. In 2009 Biernoff participated in Art in Storefronts, administered by San Francisco Arts Commission and Triple Base, San Francisco, CA and her exhibitions included Punctuation, Right Window, San Francisco, CA, Introductions 2009, Root Division, San Francisco, CA and Children of the Revolution, Federal Art Project, Los Angeles, CA.