Orlando Local, Robert Rivers is the 2021 Recipient of the Florida Prize in Contemporary Art
The Orlando Museum of Art is pleased to announce that, for the first time in the history of the Florida Prize in Contemporary Art exhibition, two local Orlando artists were the recipients of the Florida Prize award and the People's Choice award. Robert Rivers has been awarded as the recipient of the 2021 Florida Prize in Contemporary Art. The “People’s Choice” was voted on during the Florida Prize Exhibition Preview Party by the guests and the winner, Matthew Cornell was awarded $2,500. Aaron De Groft, the Executive Director and CEO of the Museum, made this announcement on June 4, 2021, at the Florida Prize Exhibition Preview Party. De Groft spoke to the necessity of having an exhibit centered on artists within the state. “The Florida Prize is incredibly important, it’s one of the greatest things this museum does to recognize cutting-edge contemporary artists in the state of Florida. We are so grateful to Gail and Michael Winn for their continued support as the presenting sponsor of the exhibition and their loyalty to the community, we couldn't have done it without them” he said. The exhibition is curated each year by Chief Curator Hansen Mulford, and Associate Curator Coralie Claeysen-Gleyzon.
The Florida Prize in Contemporary Art is organized by the Orlando Museum of Art (OMA) to bring new recognition to the most progressive, cutting-edge artists in the State. With the 2020 exhibition on hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 2021 is now the seventh exhibition of the Florida Prize. Each year, the OMA surveys artists working throughout the State before inviting ten to participate. Artists range from emerging to mid-career, often with distinguished records of exhibitions and awards that reflect recognition at national and international levels. In all cases, they are artists who are engaged in exploring significant ideas of art and culture in original and visually exciting ways. The Florida Prize in Contemporary Art and accompanying catalogue underscore the commitment of the OMA to the art of our time, and to supporting artists who live and work in our State.
The 2021 Florida Prize jurors were Aldeide Delgado and Aaron Levi Garvey. Aldeide Delgado is a Cuban-born, Miami-based independent Latinx curator, and founder/director of Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA). Aaron Levi Garvey is a Jewish-American Curator/Historian working and lecturing in Modern and Contemporary Arts and Culture. Currently, Garvey is the Chief Curator and Program Director of Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation and the Director and Curator of Long Road Projects.
The Florida Prize winner, Robert Rivers who lives in Maitland, Florida is a longtime UCF professor and an accomplished draftsman and printmaker. He sees his art practice as “what it is". He says, “practice, exercise; I like seeing the mechanics of the drawings.” "On April 28, 2010, Rivers’ nephew, Thomas, was killed during the war in Afghanistan, where he had been deployed as a Marine after a first deployment in Iraq a few years earlier. Perhaps as a way of coping with grief or to make sense of this incommensurable loss, soon after Thomas’s passing, Rivers began a series of prints portraying a sleeping soldier with a snake wrapped around his body. He made more than 400 individual medium-sized drawings in that series. These paved the way for his ongoing piece The Promised Land (2017 – to date), a monumental drawing composed of 231 panels (at the time of writing) reaching an epic length of over 500 feet –about 180 feet of which are on view in the Florida Prize exhibition," says Associate Curator Coralie Claeysen-Gleyzon. OMA Chief Curator Hansen Mulford states ”Rivers' work reflects the artist’s very personal grief, while also being an elegy to the sacrifice soldiers have made throughout human history.”
The sheer scale and scope of the work, with its convoluted linear narrative and endless sequential views, is at once overwhelmingly terrifying and astonishingly beautiful. Professor Robert Croker describes it as “a rumination upon death in general, by violence in particular; the fragility and persistence of life; the uncertainty of an afterlife, the innocence of youth, and the intensity with which our lives are bound to one another, regardless of circumstance.”
Reflecting on his win, Rivers said "it was one of the best nights of my life. A beautiful museum with beautiful people. To win the Florida Prize was a fantastic honor and I am overwhelmed."
The other extraordinary artists in the exhibition are Tra Bouscaren, Tallahassee; Matthew Cornell, Orlando; Richard Heipp, Gainesville; Sean Miller, Gainesville; Lauren Mitchell, Orlando; Marielle Plaisir, Miami; Anastasia Samoylova, Miami; Clara Varas, Miami; and Kedgar Volta, Jacksonville.
The Florida Prize in Contemporary Art is on view now until August 22, 2021, at the Orlando Museum of Art.
The Florida Prize in Contemporary Art award is generously underwritten by Gail and Michael Winn. Additional support for the 2021 exhibition is provided by Rita and Jeffrey Adler Foundation, Inge and Gene Gross, Mrs. James W. Mahaffey, Caroline and Jeffrey Blydenburgh, The Henner Family, George Poelker and Judy Black, and R.J. Santomassino.
Image: Robert Rivers (middle) is the recipient of $20,000 (Florida Prize) which is generously underwritten by Gail (right) and Michael Winn (left) who also provided funds for honoraria to each of the artists included in the exhibition.