Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board
Machines with Magnets Gallery. Pawtucket, RI. 2026.
“Light as a Feather Stiff as a Board” asks whether you are the invisible onlooker or an active participant. Eli Kaufman and Michael Gunn harness painting’s voyeuristic nature to complicate interpersonal relationships. The paintings exist at a threshold where our internal world is acted upon, through collaboration and intimacy. Tangled foliage, Twisting cables, A cast shadow—Reach, hold, repair, tend. How do we balance relying on one another while channeling the power of that which goes unseen?
The events that unfold are recalled, heightened and eventually brought back down to earth. The disillusion of our accounts is a natural conclusion. Through melodramatic lighting and intangible ghostly presence, tension between physicality and spirituality charges moments with desire—an attempt towards harmony.
This exhibition shares its title with a game played by children at slumber parties.
A puzzle, a facade, a ritual.
A levitation trick that evokes the unknown, a tension with the truth of its physics.
Is it all in your head?
Painting is used to encounter interludes between revelatory moments.
The path less traveled.
These works are collapsing space.
Hitting a wall.
Figures are eternally fixing, building, and drawing their own world.
The only way out is through.
