About the work
Kauffman’s work reflects the physicality of intimate moments, through life sized paintings. Their work mythologizes everyday experiences of labor and respite. Fixing a sink or getting a tattoo become heightened opportunities for unexpected connection. Kauffman’s palette oscillates between grayscale or monochrome, to local color and natural skin tones. These shifting color palettes pull their practice between classical genre painting, and a contemporary, transcendent, strain of loose figuration. Working from photo references, memory, and drawings, Kauffman creates believable, though sometimes improbable scenes.
Though their interest in dramatic storytelling stems from television and film, Kauffman’s paintings are primarily pulled from first-hand experiences. Within the paintings, the 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 how things are, and how they feel. Tension between autobiographical depiction and sensationalized storytelling reveals the ways we create ourselves and each other, again and again. Kauffman is interested in the ways that their paintings can reflect milestones that repeatedly prove to be important in the collective consciousness.
About the artist
Eli Kauffman’s work explores their relationship to care, repair, and rest, through life sized compositions that reflect moments with loved ones. Kauffman grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, and is currently based out of Providence, Rhode Island. They graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA, and during their degree they received the Maharam Fellowship, and exhibited works at the RISD Museum.
Kauffman debuted their first international solo exhibition in London with Artistellar Gallery. They have also shown work in St. Tropez, France, and in the United States, in San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles. Kauffman attended residency with Moosey Gallery, in Norwich, England, reflecting on, and further developing their monochromatic palettes. They were awarded the Make Art Award, from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, resulting in paintings that are now a part of the Providence Public Library’s permanent collection.
