For the Mills Gallery’s Project Room, Robert Rovenolt has created work that transforms the cast-off and forgotten into powerful explorations that address personal identity and one’s fragile relationship with humanity and the natural world.

In his words, “This body of work is memory as collage.  One’s mind sifts through layers of experiences and emotions trying to make sense of them but of course there are gaps, distortions and unexpected juxtapositions.  Just as AI is capable of hallucinations, so too is the human brain: concocting fantastic dreams as well as focusing on perceived reality.

From my earliest works I’ve been fascinated with exaggerated shifts in scale, ambiguous narratives, and tactile additions.  I’ve learned to live with and celebrate the unknowns in a work as I assemble it.  For me, it’s about the discovery that happens through chance guided by years of experience when you change the context and history of an object.”

Rovenolt was born in Pennsylvania in 1949. He moved to Boston’s South End in 1974. The artist has maintained a studio at the Boston Center for the Arts during that half-century.