Robert Rivers

Florida Contemporary 2022-23

Robert Rivers (American, b. 1950). Panels #49-51 from The Promised Land series, 2010-ongoing. Mixed media on Arches watercolor paper, appr. 84 x 66 1/2 in. (each panel, appr. 28 x 66 1/2 in.) Image courtesy of the artist.

Florida Contemporary, an annual exhibition organized by Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum, features artists with diverse artistic interests and backgrounds who hail from a variety of locations throughout Florida. The artists selected for the 10th edition of the exhibition are Edouard Duval-Carrié, Miami; Ya Levy La’ford, Tampa; and Robert Rivers, Maitland.

October 14 – June 11
Located in the Newell Gallery, Hayes Hall

Robert Rivers (b. 1950) is a printmaker, painter and professor of art at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. His expressive, pensive works with surrealistic dimensions explore themes of universal humanity: The horrors of armed conflicts, human suffering and cruelty, tragic loss and grief. Often working in series, Rivers draws inspiration from personal narratives, myths, the Bible and American literature, as well as a vast repertoire of visual arts of the past.

The Promised Land, Rivers’ ongoing epic series of paintings on paper included in this exhibition, is his magnum opus, epitomizing his artistic approach and the concerns he has engaged with over the past five decades. In April 2010, Rivers began a similar, smaller series in the aftermath of his nephew’s death; Thomas Rivers, who had been deployed as a Marine in Iraq and then in Afghanistan, was killed by the blast of an explosive device. In 2017, while Robert Rivers was expanding on that earlier series, he began creating these larger, even more striking compositions, with each panel consisting of three sheets and measuring more than five feet high. As of July 2022, The Promised Land numbers 350 panels, and it continues to grow.

The panels presented include compositions dating from 2017 to 2022. They are arranged like a site-specific installation, rather than chronologically, offering unexpected conjunctures and permitting viewers to find open-ended, potent human sagas unbound to a particular war, time or place.

Rivers has exhibited widely in the United States and the United Kingdom, and his works are housed in notable collections such as the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C.; the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, Scotland; and Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in Alabama. In 2021, he was the winner of the Florida Prize in Contemporary Art at the Orlando Museum of Art.

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Selected Works