Eli Kauffman
Eli Kauffman
Instagram: @eli_kauffman
Bio: Eli Kauffman is a fine artist from Salt Lake City, Utah. They are interested in using figurative painting, printmaking and drawing to examine interpersonal relationships between characters that are based in both fiction and reality. Eli works from a combination of photos, clay models, and film stills to create artificial scenes. Their work amplifies the differences between these sources by playing up the disparity between high-brow and low-brow imagery, resulting in paintings and prints that reference both coming of age TV shows, and dialogue surrounding contemporary figure painting.
Artist statement: Currently in my paintings I am exploring the relationship between mundane experiences and spiritual moments taking place in the same scenes. I am interested in depicting intimacy between figures as a space for healing and the complications of interpersonal relationships. I think of the majority of my work as nocturnes, where the energy of nighttime brings believable experiences into a world of fantasy and improbability. I find that at night, a domestic interior or a parking lot can become a portal into a world that visually reflects the emotional intensity that had always existed internally. I explore these ideas of a heightened and fictionalized world, through paintings, drawings, and prints.