Friedrichs Pontone is thrilled to present Satellite, the first solo exhibition in New York of works by British artist Chris Rivers, featuring a mesmerizing selection of his otherworldly, stellar skyscapes. 

Rivers’ large-scale paintings are inspired by the natural world and his fascination with the cosmos. His works capture the beauty and majesty of the sky, from the swirling clouds to the shimmering stars. These paintings are not simply depictions of the natural world, but rather a reflection of Rivers’ own emotional response to it. Rendered in a sumptuous palette of rich color and a welter of expressive, gestural handling that is at once abstract and representational, Rivers conveys the awe-inspiring power of nature and the limitless potential of the universe.

Born in 1983 in Manchester, England, Chris Rivers began his artistic journey in 2014. As a self-taught painter, Rivers brings a fresh perspective to the art world. Formerly a professional drummer for UK rock band Heaven’s Basement, his work is rooted in his background as a musician, which he infuses into his art through the use of rhythm and movement, treating the canvas as a drum. Every painting maintains an energetic, almost frenzied tempo, tempered by subtle manipulations of technique and pace that captivate and enchant the viewer with their strange and beautiful ambience.

His works are a testament to his dedication to exploring and exploiting the pictorial possibilities generated by the physicality of his painting process. Rivers creates sumptuous, surrealistic, fantastical scenes of otherworldly, stellar landscapes with saturated washes of vibrant color that develop into lowering skyscapes, clots, and accretions of impasto that turn into mountain ranges, scattered and scumbled paint fields that become the detritus of volcanic explosions, and swirling billows of translucent medium that suggest protean clouds of gas. The contrast of light and dark elements presents a dichotomy that invites the viewer to explore the interplay between opposing forces, evoking at once a sense of innocence and treachery, harmony and dissonance, serenity and turbulence, order and chaos.

He carefully inserts small figures, often astronauts and cherubs, into his galactic turmoil to establish a sense of innocence and isolation, struggle and survival. Indistinguishable at first glance, the figures are subsumed in fiery, elemental vortices of turbulent paint, carried through time and space, desperate voyagers in an alien world. They exist on the edge of the sublime, in awe of the terrifying universe surrounding them. Rivers seems keen to emphasize human vulnerability and at the same time hail the pioneering spirit, inviting the viewer on a fantastic voyage, in anticipation of being lost and found in space. 

Through his alchemical and self-described “alternative” process, Rivers transforms mundane material into visionary images. Satellite showcases Rivers’ mastery of the language of painterly abstraction to create pictures of notional and imaginary places and is a testament to Rivers’ artistry and passion for exploring the beauty and wonder of the cosmos, the complexities and contradictions of the human experience, and the infinite possibilities of the universe.