Clive van den Berg | Landscape Echoes | 2023
Goodman Gallery presents Landscape Echoes, an exhibition that delves into the evocative artistic practice of Clive van den Berg whose work deftly weaves together themes of landscape, absence, and echoes. In this show the artist offers a gestural and intuitive application of paint to these thematic explorations, letting the paint have greater direction in the visual composition and emotive capabilities of each work.
Van den Berg continues to reflect on his own complex relationship to landscape with this show providing a body of work that communicates a more visceral articulation of this engagement. This is embedded in the quality of the paint as much as the construction of the paintings and the abstract imagery that emerges on the canvas.
Drawing upon his distinctive visual language of gestural brushstrokes, Van den Berg’s paintings explore the porous nature of land as a receptacle for lived experience, unearthing what lies unresolved beneath its surface. In this exhibition, the landscapes serve as a departure point, transcending their physicality to evoke a haunting absence that resonates within the viewer’s consciousness. In this way, the works, with multiple modes of painting present, operate as a series of maps that guide viewers through imagined topographies and merged temporalities.
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About
Clive van den Berg
Clive van den Berg (b. 1956, Luanshya, Zambia) is a Johannesburg-based artist, curator and designer who has focused on pioneering the insertion of queer perspectives into the larger rewrite of South African history throughout the course of his prolific forty-year career. Van den Berg has produced a range of works spanning a variety of mediums delve into the porous nature of human existence and the landscapes we inhabit, creating a profound commentary on vulnerability, memory, and the intersection of personal and collective histories.
Van den Berg’s retrospective, titled Porous, took place at the Wits Art Museum in August 2024, and was accompanied by a major new book published by Skira.
In his paintings, he delves into the porous nature of land, acting as a vessel for lived experiences and unearthing unresolved layers beneath its surface. Within Van den Berg’s practice, the landscapes serve as a departure point, transcending physicality to evoke a haunting absence that guide viewers through imagined topographies. Van den Berg’s sculptural practice is equally captivating, focusing on the male form and the symbolic resonance of skin to explore themes of vulnerability and exposure. Through this vulnerability, he challenges traditional notions of masculinity and brings to light the ever-present spectre of mortality. His work serves as a poignant meditation on love, loss, and resilience.
His public projects have included the artworks for landmark Northern Cape Legislature and, since he has joined the trace team, museum projects for the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Constitution Hill, Freedom Park, the Workers Museum, The Holocaust and Genocide Centre and many other projects.
Solo exhibitions include: Porous, Wits Art Museum (2024); Remembering, a survey exhibition of paintings, prints and sculptures, Kwa-Zulu Natal Society of Art Gallery, Durban (2021); Personal Affects, Museum of African Art, New York (2005).
Major curated exhibitions include: If You Look Hard Enough, You Can See Our Future: Selections of Contemporary South African Art from the Nando’s Art Collection, The African American Museum of Dallas, Dallas (2023); Breaking Down the Walls: 150 years of Art Collecting, Iziko SANG, Cape Town (2023); Screening of Memorials Without Facts: Men Loving, São Paulo Museum of Art, São Paulo (2018); Earth Matters: Lands as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington D.C. (2013-2014).
Collections include: El Espacio 23, Miami; Amant Foundation, New York; A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town; Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg; Spier Arts Trust, London; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Smithsonian Museum of African Art, Washington DC and Video Brasil, Sao Paulo.
Van den Berg lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.
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