Chris Rivers at Arlo Wynwood: Cosmos

4 December 2024 - 28 February 2025

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Overview

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.