Chris Rivers English, b. 1983

Pontone Gallery is delighted to present a new collection of zodiac-inspired prints by British artist Chris Rivers. Like the stardust from which we came, this celestial body of work is a rare opportunity to own a piece of the astrological universe that is truly yours.

Pontone Gallery introduces an ensemble show for 2025, featuring a roster of international and home-grown talent, whose practices range across painting, works on paper and sculpture.

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.

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.

Chris Rivers deploys his trademark gestural urgency and expressive handling to describe a world of jeopardy and turmoil. ‘Expendable Youth’ is a direct reference to the sombre consequences of the...

Rivers is an artist dedicated to exploring and exploiting the pictorial possibilities generated by the physicality of his painting process: saturated washes of vibrant colour develop into lowering skyscapes; clots...

Korean sculptor Hwang Seontae makes lightboxes. Constructed from etched glass and concealed LED lighting, these are meticulously crafted images of still contemplation which depict contemporary, domestic interiors. Malcolm Liepke ,...

Matteo Massagrande is a critically acclaimed Italian painter. He creates images of atmospheric architectural vistas and emotionally significant landscapes. Steeped in the classical tradition, he brings a great depth of...

Each ‘Angels are Astronauts’ picture references a particular planet of the solar system, as well as the Sun. The scenes are swirling vortices of turbid colour, allusive to the popularly-...

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.