Time Out For Tears is an exhibition of paintings based on still frames from consecutive seasons
of The Bachelor, The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise. The work focuses on a ubiquitous trope
in reality TV - female contestants crying on camera. As the viewer moves through the room, they are
confronted over and over with an onslaught of tears, sobs and weeping women
- much like the promotional videos filled with smash cuts of emotion that the paintings are based
on. The work forces the viewer and artist to be complicit in the show’s voyeurism and manipulation,
where women’s bodies are sites of surveillance and tears become bodily proof of authenticity. The
exhibition space becomes a venue for the display of human emotion and a document of the spectacle
of consumption. The work contemplates the commercialization of romantic love, the exploitation of
women's bodies and mental state and the creeping grip reality TV has taken on American culture and
politics over the last two decades.
Kristin Hough is an artist, educator and curator newly based in Reno, Nevada. She received her BA
from Wesleyan University and her MFA from UC Davis, where she was awarded the Provost and Margrit
Mondavi Fellowships. Her work has been exhibited nationally and featured in New American Paintings,
Friend of the Artist and Hyperallergic. In addition, she’s been an artist-in-residence at the Vermont Studio
Center and Los Angeles’s ECF Downtown Art Center, and recently released a book with National
Monument Press. She co-founded an artist-run project space, Outback Arthouse, and has curated
exhibitions in Las Vegas, Reno, Portland and throughout Los Angeles. She's currently teaching
drawing and design at UNLV and UNR, painting stills from reality TV and collaborating on the land art project Pinewood Vortex.
On exhibit at Whitney Library from October 26, 2021 through January 11, 2022
Monday: 10:00AM – 8:00PM
Tuesday: 10:00AM – 8:00PM
Wednesday: 10:00AM – 8:00PM
Thursday: 10:00AM – 8:00PM
Friday: 10:00AM – 6:00PM
Saturday: 10:00AM – 6:00PM
Sunday: 10:00AM – 6:00PM
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