You are here

Universal by Chris Rivers

Type:

City:

Categories:

Exhibition Type:

How many artists: 
1

How many exhibition works:

Date: 
Tuesday, 20 August 2024 to Saturday, 21 September 2024

“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself” - Carl Sagan

 

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.

Curator :

Artist:

Telephone: 
020 7730 8777
Venue ( Address ): 

Pontone Gallery

74a Newman St

London

W1T 3DB

Pontone Gallery , London

 


 

Follow @_artweek

 


 

 

Other events from Pontone Gallery

view
Universal by Chris Rivers
08/20/2024 to 09/21/2024
view
Turbulent Materiality
07/11/2024 to 08/10/2024
view
Madeleine Gross: Paradise
06/05/2024 to 07/06/2024
view
Heather Horton: Naiad
06/05/2024 to 07/06/2024

Pages

Related Shows This Week in UK

view
Tim Noble & Sue Webster: Love and Hate at Firstsite
12/01/2023 to 12/31/2024
view
Bowman Sculpture Gallery at Frieze Masters 2024
10/10/2024 to 10/13/2024
view
Fragments of a Panorama by Murthovic and Thiruda: Opening Party
07/12/2024 to 10/13/2024
view
WarholMania
09/12/2024 to 11/12/2024
view
Jilly Edwards – Woven Tapestries: Follow the Thread Exhibition
08/10/2024 to 10/12/2024
view
Lancelot Ribeiro: Heads In and Out of Our Time
09/18/2024 to 11/29/2024
view
Folk & Bespoke Artisan Craft Market
05/04/2024 to 12/07/2024
view
Late Lounge @ Firstsite
06/07/2024 to 12/06/2024

Pages