Chris Rivers

To celebrate the opening of our new London gallery on Newman Street, Pontone Gallery is thrilled to present Chris Rivers | Celestial Gardens, a collection of ten paintings inspired by the artist's ideas about the planets of the solar system. These are not representational images, but musings on their nature, physical properties and varied associations in myth, folklore and contemporary culture.

This is an exhibition of six painters who explore and exploit process. Common to all is an obsessive interest in the materiality of paint and the technique of painting. Each presents the viewer with a rich and seductive surface. Each articulates their particular vision.

Chris Rivers is a painter of sumptuously-coloured, turbulent skyscapes. The expressively- handled paint describes seething clouds, mists and vapours. Cyclones of elemental matter billow through an indeterminate void. On closer inspection however, tiny figures can be seen caught up in the maelstrom. Our perception of the paintings oscillates between the sublime vastness of nature and small-scale incidents of human jeopardy and disaster. This is in an old-master tradition of embedding memento mori, which are not at first apparent.

Pontone Gallery presents a special exhibition in Augusta, Georgia. This is an exhibition of five painters, who explore and exploit process. Common to all is an obsessive interest in the materiality of paint and the technique of painting. Each presents the viewer with a rich and seductive surface. Each articulates their particular vision.