Chris Rivers

Pontone Gallery is delighted to present Cosmos by British artist Chris Rivers at Arlo, Wynwood. This series features exuberant works in which the artist utilises the materiality of paint to create images of otherworldly expanses and environments.

Expansive skyscapes are engulfed in swirling clouds, vibrant washes of colour, and scattered explosions of galactic debris. In Cosmos, Rivers explores the language of painterly abstraction to depict notional and ethereal places, inviting us on an extraordinary voyage, where we anticipate being both lost and found in space.

Chris Rivers often introduces small figures—such as astronauts, cherubs, or skeletons—into his work. These figures, dwarfed by the monumental scale, are absorbed in fiery, elemental vortices of turbulent paint, carried through time and space. Rivers emphasises human vulnerability while celebrating the pioneering, unbridled spirit. His tiny protagonists exist on the edge of the sublime, in awe of the limitless universe surrounding them.

Cosmos showcases Rivers’ powerful dedication to exploring the beauty and vastness of the cosmic system, the complexities and contradictions of the human condition, and the infinite possibilities of the universe.

Pontone Gallery is proud to present a new exhibition by British painter, Chris Rivers. ‘Universal’ consists of a suite of sixteen paintings, four of which are of the elements: earth, fire, water and air; and twelve depict the individual signs of the zodiac. The artist presents us with his compendium of the cosmos, each image a whirlpool of sumptuous colour, fluid gesture and corporeal paint.

Rivers is, above all, a virtuoso manipulator of his medium and takes endless pleasure in its materiality. He strokes and sweeps oil paint to make roiling slicks of opaque colour play against shiny, glassy glazes. Turbid skins and crusts of caked impasto catch the eye and set up illusions of depth in the picture plane. Clusters of marks, spread and brushed out against grainy washes of broken earth hues, allude to elemental incidents, explosions and eruptions in the vastness of space. The colour palette asserts itself in a frenzy of cerulean blues, cool violets, rich madder-reds and blushing crimsons. New to his technique is the introduction of metal leaf - copper, silver, gold and platinum laid into the background or strewn in patches across the surface, glinting and gleaming in evocation of the celestial skyscape.

The zodiac often appears as a theme in medieval and early Renaissance art. Rivers references this occult fascination and echoes its desire to make order out of elemental complexity. The coherent, story-telling structure and sequence of the Zodiac works as a mechanism to counteract and accommodate the numinous and sublime terror of what appears to be the infinite chaos of space.

Rivers’ immersive and beautiful sequence of paintings assimilates the constellations and their essential constituents. His is a creative process that pulls apart and reassembles, modifies and transmits with the stroke of a brush to explore the artist’s signature themes of transformation and transcendence.

To celebrate Chris Rivers' first solo exhibiton in our partner gallery Friedrichs Pontone in New York, Pontone Gallery is delighted to announce Portal in London. This is a series of...

This winter Pontone Gallery exhibits at the prestigious Art Miami fair. The gallery showcases a selection of its international artists, who range across the fields of painting, lightbox and sculpture....

This spring Pontone Gallery exhibits at the prestigious Expo Chicago art fair. The gallery showcases a selection of its international artists, who range across the fields of painting, photography and...

Pontone Gallery is proud to present ‘Odyssey’ , a new suite of paintings by Chris Rivers. His signature-style is much in evidence, typified by emphatically gestural handling, a sumptuous colour...

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.