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Exploring New Worlds: Inside the 12th Annual OMA Florida Prize Exhibition
Photography by Zaire Aranguren, Rheo Creative
One of my favorite annual events in Orlando is the Orlando Museum of Art’s Florida Prize exhibition. This summer’s show is the 12th year, not counting its pandemic break during the summer of 2020.
The show always includes an interesting variety of works and mediums.
Its premise is to choose the ten most interesting contemporary artists in the state. There are twelve artists this year. Two groups are collaborations. OMA’s Coralie Claeysen-Gleyzon, chief curator, and Katherine Page, associate curator, did a masterful job of putting this showcase together.
Meredith Laura Lynn and Katie Hargrave have collaborated on a pair of video installations and mixed media pieces that playfully explore assumptions about women doing outdoor activities.
When I spoke with the artists, they mentioned how men rush over to show them how to do things that they are very adept at, like setting up a campsite. They also talked about how many of the men who are figureheads in this world were often inept. They mentioned John Muir and the Bartram father and son. It made me think of Columbus and the perception of discovery. We like our myths.
The artists created videos of themselves wearing exaggerated homemade camouflage outfits. They were not legitimately camouflaged because they intentionally stood out, with their over-the-top costumes. The videos are a funny look at a more serious issue.
Francisco Masó’s works are a poetic take on his background in stage design. They come across like an ambiguous stage set and are responses to abuses of power that he’s experienced in his homeland, Cuba, and to living as a man of color. His collage-like work has the look of a designer. The childlike paper-roll bracelets are fun and veil the weight of the topic.
Charo Oquet’s room is full of free-form drawings on the walls, another example of a seasoned artist working in a childlike format. Along with her wall drawings, she has totem-type rags and other found objects hanging from the high ceiling.
Oquet’s work feels like that of a precocious child, representing someone who has lived a long life. Her works are expressions of an Afro-Caribbean woman interpreting the symbols and rituals of her culture.
Austrian-born Maria Theresa Barbist has a doctorate in psychology. Her work as a psychologist led her to look into art therapy, and after studying it, she started taking art seriously in her 30s. Her paintings are haunting, raw, and powerful, and seem to reference Art Brut, which makes sense.
Rose Marie Cromwell’s documentary photography blurs the political, personal, and spiritual. I am especially interested in her installation that features still black-and-whites and video.
I am also a fan of the quilt made from black-and-white photos. The whole room is captivating.
Jason Hackenwerth’s wall of paintings is somewhere between street art and art brut. They are a lot of fun but a little moody too.
Jessy Nite’s art is mostly textile-based, with some text-based work that conveys cryptic messages in an almost decorative style. Jenny Holzer, Ed Ruscha, and Barbara Kruger have a history of working with text. Nite’s take feels more nuanced than these historical examples.
Ema Ri is a queer-identifying Cuban American multidisciplinary artist based in Miami.
Ri’s paintings appear to have descended from J.M.W. Turner’s or Francis Bacon’s atmospheric, messy (in a good way) quality, with some representation, but mostly abstraction. It’s the kind of work where the second viewing becomes more interesting. They are melancholy and hypnotic.
Metter Tommerup takes up the entire eastern wall of the museum’s largest room. Her paintings feel like symbols. They are symmetrical, architectural, and sculptural and create an invented landscape that draws on her Nordic tradition.
We Are Nice’n Easy’s glass-brick kitschy mimicry, accompanied by headless female and male seated sculptures holding their detached heads, has a cheery pink South Beach color scheme. The two people look fit and trim. The installation looks breezy and light, except that they are headless. I can imagine them being in a South Beach hotel lobby. The pink color tones down the fact that they are headless. It doesn’t feel like a hotel in Scarface, but it’s slightly unsettling and maybe even beautiful.
Part of what makes this exhibition special is the variety and that the narratives only fit together loosely. Although they don’t directly connect, when brought together into one exhibition, they feel like parts of each other.
It’s like walking through new worlds.
The Florida Prize in Contemporary Art is a $20,000 award granted to a single artist or team by an invited and distinguished juror. This year’s juror, Jade Powers, The Hugh Kaul Curator of Contemporary Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, selected Francisco Masó as the recipient. Museum-goers can still vote for the People’s Choice Award, with a $5,000 prize; the winner will be announced during the exhibition’s closing ceremony on Aug. 20. The exhibition fully closes Aug. 23. Learn more.
Mike Synan
News | Sports | Politics
- After two decades in news and politics, Mike Synan is returning to his roots to write Sports as “The Sportsaholic”. Mike hosted a talk show for 6 years on WDBO after Magic home games called “Magic Til Midnight”, and spent years working as an in-game correspondent for both ESPN and Fox Sports Radio. His column “Synan Says” has appeared on both www.wdbo.com and www.floridadaily.com. He has a BS in Political Science from Clemson University. You can reach him at msynan@sportsmail.com
