Eli 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 in painting. 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 shown work in St. Tropez, France, and in the United States, in San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles. Kauffman attended painting residency with Moosey Gallery, in Norwich, England. They were awarded the RISCA 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.
Artist Statement
My work mythologizes interpersonal relationships, sourced through a combination of photos and film stills. The reference imagery highlights the disparity between personal experiences of friends and family, and the sensationalized storytelling of social media and television. I am interested in the conversation between contemporary painting, and pop culture media that is considered low brow. My work is like a soap opera; It is all about slowing fast moments down so that we can sit in them.
These spaces become opportunities for heightened intimacy, chaos and disaster. A first kiss or first tattoo can become the most monumental event, a moment for contemplation and exploration of identity. Settings that have naturally repeated in the work are the bedroom, the car and the public park, influenced by teen dramas where these settings are regularly the backdrop for paradigm-shifting events. I am interested in the ways that my paintings can reflect milestones that repeatedly prove to be important in the collective consciousness.
I have a day job at a worker-owned, queer cafe, and I volunteer/organize with a community-run bicycle shop in my neighborhood. I am grateful to lead such a full life, as these experiences in my community inspire the scenes in my work. I think a lot about labor and respite in the content of my paintings. I work in food service, and many of my friends are also in physical jobs, as bike mechanics, tattoo artists, electricians.
I have begun exploring the physicality of these experiences in my practice, through making all of my work life sized. In some of the works, figures return the gaze of the audience, as if they are waiting to speak, or to have their photo taken. I aim to convince the audience that they could step into the work and be a part of the events depicted on the canvas. I am often asking myself where the viewer is in space relative to the figures in the work. The ground is tipped forwards towards the picture plane, leaving the audience to be floating in space, observing the scene as a witness.
