The 2021 ars viva award kicks-off with an exhibition opening at the Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt am Main on 9 October 2020. It presents works by the three award winners Rob Crosse, Richard Sides and Sung Tieu. A second exhibition will be presented at the Kunstverein Hannover in April/May 2021.

Rob Crosse, Richard Sides and Sung Tieu each address questions of human existence and the at times tension-laden coexistence of social groups. Their central medium is digital film, complemented by photography, drawing, installation, sound and objects.

Featured in this exhibition is Rob Crosse's Prime Time, which follows a group of older gay men as they journey on a cruise ship around the Caribbean. Members of a social network of so-called ‘Prime Timers’, they regularly get together on excursions of this type, to renew acquaintances, re-affirm the bonds of belonging to a supportive community, and rekindle a little itch of adventure. As the pleasure boat cruises from port to port, the unvanishing line of the horizon doubles as a metaphor for the never-ending churn of desire (always re-forming, always out of reach), while the vessel itself, with its cargo of temporary travellers, reminds us how random connections bring people closer, or keep them apart.