‘Porous’ is a representation of four decades of Clive Van Den Berg’s works, beautifully curated by Julia Charlton in the wonderful spaces of Wits Art Museum (WAM). The artist is also currently exhibiting in a group show at Goodman Gallery titled ‘Irapuru’ which opened on the 28th of August and will be running until the 28th of September 2024 in London. ‘Porous’ on the other hand is evocative, provocative, declarative, intimate and speaks of material substance. Van Den Berg’s work engages with complex ideas and issues in a subtle, sensitive, respectful and an acute intellectual rigour. The artist is verbally articulate and is aware of his sophisticated visual syntax to mobilise. A founding member of Trace, a team of professionals working in the field of heritage and curating, the artist has worked on many public projects such as the Workers’ Museum in Newtown, Section 4 at Constitution Hill, Freedom Park in Pretoria and the Holocaust and Genocide Centre.
In ‘Porous’, Van Den Berg asks his viewers to be agile and to engage with his works actively. This is while emphasising that there are sometimes no words for how you read an image. This exhibition is a slippery interplay between the elusive and the figurative. It is also a historical reference. The artist believes in physical work, in that the process of making art is an act of care. Similarly, his viewers too have a responsibility to read the work with care.
The exhibition introduces many of the themes in the entrance space of the gallery’s foyer. The curatorial statement signals the themes of land and love. This introduction includes not only the traditional idea of what is visible but also what happens below the surface. It is no coincidence that the artist’s father was a minor in Zambia linking Van Den Berg’s long fascination of Johannesburg, a city built on the underground resources of gold. The exhibition’s other theme is love. This takes a particular direction with the AIDS epidemic in the 80s for Clive as a gay man. As indicated in the curatorial statement, he began to “re-imagine his body as a porous thing” where the protective membrane of skin no longer protected the private body from the social space.
Speaking on the history of Johannesburg includes speaking on South Africa’s colonial history. This means a complex relationship to land both in terms of land ownership and exploitation of resources. ‘Perous’ shows traditional scale relationships and abandoned receding spaces, creating a disconcerting dislocation. Although what is underground is not ordinarily visible, Van den Berg speaks about somehow having a somatic knowledge of it through events like earth tremors and blasting. The works also combine “above” and “below” in one format. Journeying up the ramp to the gallery upstairs, one passes the huge wall-papered section showing images from Clive’s sketchbook, blown up to a very large scale. ‘Poroud’ opened on the 27th of August and will run until the 28th of October 2024.
