Believability

Also on view: Rachel Stern "This Terestrial Paradise" Ortega y Gasset Projects is pleased to present Believability, a solo exhibition of new work by Open Call Main Space recipient, Kristen Mills. Believability, an exhibition of new works by Kristen Mills, takes her video work into a physical dimension. Literally. Ortega y Gasset Project’s Main Space has become a stage setting for videos featuring hand-made scenes, props, and backdrops composed much like the intimate studio sets of her video works. The exhibition continues Mills’ ongoing video manifesto - a durational piece made up of a number of video shorts. Though farcical and non-linear at times, the content of this work is directly dictated by her circumstances as her own daily realness blatantly shines through. This is where believability exists. Artist Statement: I make videos about seemingly innocuous scenarios. I use video to engage with timing and humor, and I use myself as a surrogate for others, freeing me to poke fun at pop-cultural assumptions and behaviors. In these various versions of “me”, I position myself as willful yet unexceptional, in order to highlight the content and sidestep autobiographical confessions. My work can be read as silly or heavy-handed, however subverting larger looming issues such as gender, identity, and classism. I consciously blend and blur the real with the staged in order to heighten visual and cerebral absurdities. Kristen Mills holds an MFA from Tyler School of Art and an MSAE from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She is a former adjunct Assistant Professor, teaching at both Tyler and MassArt while co-running/owning Cloud Coffee, an artist-run mobile caffeinated endeavor. In 2016, Mills maintained an Artist-in-Residence position at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and in 2017, she gained her first museum show with her collaborative project, Sister Spaceship, at the Delaware Contemporary Museum. In 2018, Mills successfully thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail (northbound) and then began a year-long residency/staff-artist position at the Vermont Studio Center. She is currently living in Vermont employed as VSC’s Visual Arts Program Manager. Mills’ work engages a variety of strategies: video art, installations, talk shows, comedic performances, collaborative engagements, and teaching - in an ongoing investigation of how meaning is constructed in our contemporary culture. Her work has been exhibited in many, many excellent places.