This exhibition demonstrates Clive van den Berg’s rare ability to work in several mediums, such as painting, sculpture and drawing
By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor
The first thing that you will notice when you enter the Wits Art Museum’s glass doors ahead of you is a big abstract painting staring at you. On the opening of the exhibition on Tuesday, August 27, 2024, this painting attracted curious gaze from almost everyone, stopping to have a not so short view of this piece, before proceeding to the first floor where the main exhibition is.
Here in the main exhibition hall, you will also not fail to notice a giant wooden sculptural work at the centre which is embedded with portraits of mystery looking man..
On your left, it will be hard not to notice a giant painting titled African Landscapes, that appears to demonstrate the contradiction of life in an African society.
My attention was however soon pulled to the second floor where everyone seemed to be proceeding to quickly, where in glass cases were sexually explicit drawings collectively titled Erotic History. This most probably explainswhy everyone in this teeming crowd was quick to go up there. Indeed, sex sells. Even in art. The only thing though is that this a section to view in the company of your partner, certainly not your mom or dad, to avoid sudden moments of silent ambiguity between the two of you.
Welcome to well known artist Clive van den Berg’s exhibition titled: Porous which opened on Tuesday 27 August 2024 and is running till 26 October 2024.
The opening was attended by a huge number of influential figures in the country, spanning academia, art and business, demonstrating the wide reach of the artist’s art practice. This exhibition demonstrates the artist’s rare ability towork in several mediums, such as painting, sculpture and drawing. Some of the works in the exhibition cover a period of his early works, dating back to the 1980s, and almost all the works are from private collections, showing that he is a widely collected artist in South Africa.
Porous is a survey exhibition of Clive van den Berg’s work. His artistic practice is centered around two main themes, land and love. The surface of land and the surface of skin have occupied many artists, so much so that landscape and figurative painting are core terms in our lexicon. What makes van den Berg’s practice distinct is his interest in the porous – porous skin and porous land.
He became acutely aware of the permeability of skin in the 1980s with the identification of the HIV virus. “From that time I began to re-imagine my body as a porous thing, vulnerable to an invisible and incomprehensible threat. It was a medieval moment. Modernism had ruptured, medicine meant nothing and the words gay and plague, were joined. And yet we found ways to love, knowingly, in the face of accumulating threats to our health and identity”.
Van den Berg’s paintings and sculptures have explored the enduringly uneasy relationship between the familiar above ground landscape and the less familiar below ground landscape – the underneath, the realm of geology, mining, burial, and the repressed. He has forged a unique pictorial language that allows the present and past to meet, repressed memory to have voice and the underneath to be given image.
The exhibition is supported by Goodman Gallery.
Museum hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10:00 – 16:00
Entrance is free and all are welcome
Exhibition dates: 27 August – 26 October 2024