Exposure 2017

Elisheva Biernoff made this painting, Exposure, and I’m just imagining her doing it. It's like she’s reaching back, figuring something out about source material, about photographs. The painting has this delicate, kind of faded quality, all in these quiet greens and browns. It makes you think about the history it represents, the original photograph and its layered narrative. I wonder what Biernoff was thinking about as she laid down each stroke. Was she contemplating the person in the photo, the textures of the jungle, or the act of painting itself as a form of preservation? The paint isn’t thick here; it's subtle, like a memory trying to surface. You see the soldier, the greens of the leaves around him, but it’s all soft, a bit like a dream. That softness – it’s how the gesture communicates, almost whispering a story about time, war, and memory. I think it’s part of a larger conversation that many painters are having, not just with history but with each other. It's a continuous exchange, where new ideas are built upon old ones, in an attempt to find some kind of expression which embraces uncertainty.