They Were Here

2009 - Installation (Installation)

Elisheva Biernoff

year born: 1980
gender: female
nationality: American

In her recent work, Biernoff is interested in investigating fictions and fantasies embedded in the remnants of consumer culture (for example magazines) or through ephemera such as postcards and old photographs. Although the imagery present in her work might seem nostalgic upon first encounter, Biernoff’s complex tableaux often reveal the artist’s skeptical look towards her subjects matters. They Were Here (2010), constitutes a clear example. The 16 ft long tableau confronts the viewer with a seemingly paradisiacal scene: a tropical deserted island with white sands and blooming trees appears to be a coveted destination. However the scene quickly turns into a dystopian image, once one pays attention to the small details camouflaged inside it: an erupting volcano or a dead bird. Biernoff places a pair of binoculars in front of the painting to reinforce this idea. Looking through their fake mdf lenses, the painted landscape is rendered blurry. The whole scene acts up as the backdrop of a theater act and the prop quality of its elements suggests a certain lightness associated with utopian dreams.


Elisheva Biernoff’s work engages and reconsiders the tradition of painting in an interesting way, often taking source material from media or recreating photographs through a careful trompe d’oeil technique. Thus, her work engages in the discussion of re-representation through painting, not aiming to portray any given reality faithfully but rather as the ideal way to engage with a subject matter that explores the intersection between myths, fictions and fantasies. In some cases, her works also address particular ecological concerns.


Colors:



Long Long Live
© » KADIST

Yao Jui-Chung

2013

Long Long Live (2013) takes the viewer to the setting of the Oasis Villa on Green Island, once a reform and re-education prison to house political prisoners during Taiwan’s martial law period...

Untitled 6/10 i-xxii
© » KADIST

Nathaniel Dorsky

2010

Dorsky’s pieces included in the Kadist Collection are small still photographs from twelve of his most important films...

Untitled #185, 65, 535 combinations of a 2×2 grid, 16 colors
© » KADIST

John Houck

2013

John Houck’s brown- , sienna- and golden-toned composition, Untitled #185, 65, 535 combinations of a 2×2 grid, 16 colors , features densely packed lines of color moving diagonally across the creased page...

Made in Heaven
© » KADIST

Mark Leckey

2004

In Made In Heaven , we are face to face with a sculptural apparition, a divine visitation in the artist’s studio...

Captain X
© » KADIST

Luke Butler

2008

In Captain X , Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, played by William Shatner, is limply draped over a large boulder in what looks like a hostile alien environment...

Blockbuster
© » KADIST

Conrad Ruiz

2011

Conrad Ruiz loves to paint subjects related to the “boy zone”: video games, weapons, games, science fiction, fantasy, and special effects...

White Minority
© » KADIST

Juan Capistran

2005

White Minority , is typical of Capistran’s sampling of high art genres and living subcultures in which the artist subsumes an object’s high art pedigree within a vernacular art form...

Re: Looking
© » KADIST

Wong Hoy Cheong

2004

Re: Looking marks a new phase in Wong’s work which connects his region’s history with other parts of the world...

Paper Tigers…from a whisper to a scream
© » KADIST

Juan Capistran

2012

The 10 $1 bills that make up From a Whisper to a Scream (2012) read like instructions in origami...

Untitled #242, 104, 975 combinations of a 2×2 grid, 18 colors
© » KADIST

John Houck

2013

Untitled #242 is part of Houck’s Aggregates Series, which uses digital tools to manipulate chosen sets and pairs of colors, creating colorful index sheets, bathed in colors and lines...

Days of Our Lives: Playing for Dying Mother
© » KADIST

Wong Hoy Cheong

2009

Created for the tenth Lyon Bienniale, in Days of Our Lives: Playing for Dying Mother, Wong’s ongoing negotiation of postcolonial globalization takes aim at French society...

Argument
© » KADIST

Firenze Lai

2013

Central Station, Alignment, and Argument are “situation portraits” that present whimsical characters within distorted and troubling worlds...

LAB
© » KADIST

Kori Newkirk

2013

LAB (2013) conjures the body as the trace of a sooty hand appears, spectrally, on a crumpled paper towel...

Island
© » KADIST

Kan Xuan

2006

In Kan Xuan’s four-channel video Island , a series of objects like nail clippers, hairbrush, toothpaste, and house decorations are shot in close-ups...

Stamp -X, Stamp -Y
© » KADIST

John Houck

2013

John Houck’s multi-layered photographic compositions immortalize nostalgic objects from the artist’s childhood, manipulated in the studio and in post-production into unreal still-life arrangements...

Peg and Jon
© » KADIST

John Houck

2013

Houck’s Peg and John was made as part of a series of photographic works that capture objects from the artist’s childhood...

Untitled (Rolled up)
© » KADIST

Jonathan Monk

2003

Untitled (rolled up) , is an abstract portrait of Owen Monk, the artist’s father and features an aluminum ring of 56.6 cm in diameter measuring 1.77 cm in circumference, the size of his father...

New Fall Lineup
© » KADIST

Conrad Ruiz

2009

It may take a minute to recognize the background of New Fall Lineup – the colors are tweaked into a world of cartoon and candy, and it is covered by leaping energetic figures and flying squirrels...

Making Chinatown
© » KADIST

Ming Wong

2012

Making Chinatown (2012) is a remake of Roman Polanski’s 1974 classic neo-noir film Chinatown ...