Otherworld

Machines with Magnets Gallery. Pawtucket, RI. 2025.

Eli Kauffman and J Rowen O’Dwyer bring together vivid, psychologically charged paintings that explore the threshold between the physical and the mythic, the home and the holy. Their work charts the sacred rituals of queer life — from moments of pleasure to acts of care, devotion, and transformation.

The home becomes a site of alchemy, the body a threshold, and queer experiences a mirror and a myth in constant renewal. The outside world serves as a mirror, a set on which to explore new versions of ourselves, and fill unexpected roles. Images drawn from play, intimacy, domesticity, and community shift between documentation and dream, honoring both the rawness and the magic of trans and queer existence.

This exhibition is a love letter to the ways we create ourselves and each other, again and again, across thresholds both visible and unseen. Otherworld refers to myths and realms in legends, but also to the term “Otherworldly” describing the uncanny nature of otherness, leaving the door open to new realms, for those considered outcast.