Kristin Hough

Lives and works in Las Vegas, NV, USA

Artist statement

Kristin Hough uses the expanded field of painting to explore how capital exploits consumers’ search for meaning and purpose, with a focus on reality TV. She replicates moments from survival and romance-seeking reality shows, revealing digital media’s commodification of nature and spirituality in an effort to emotionally manipulate the viewer. In her newest body of work, Hough recreates a constant trope in the reality TV show Bachelor in Paradise: female contestants crying on camera. The work contemplates the commercialization of romantic love, the exploitation of women's emotions, and the creeping grip reality TV has taken on American culture and politics over the last two decades. Offsetting that work are visions of the sublime, symbols of nature that are often collected and photographed in a gendered and precious way (fish and butterflies, waterfalls, rainbows). This visual amalgam is rendered in paint and then replicated again into souvenir objects - trophies, trinkets, guides to paradise and beyond.

Artwork