Goodman Gallery, in collaboration with Oude Leeskamer, presents Remnant – a survey of new and recent paintings by South African artist Clive van den Berg. Bringing together works that continue his decades-long meditation on land, memory and the unseen forces that settle within a place, Remnant foregrounds Van den Berg’s intuitive, gestural approach to painting as a form of unearthing. In these works, landscape becomes both site and process, a mutable field in which meaning is continuously negotiated rather than resolved. What appears on the canvas often feels provisional, held between what is remembered and what resists articulation.
Van den Berg has long viewed landscape as a terrain shaped by the past and its echoes. He approaches land not as a neutral expanse but as a repository of lived experience, marked by what has occurred, what has been forgotten, and what lingers unresolved. In Remnant, he deepens this enquiry through surfaces animated by sweeping gestures, shifts of colour and textured passages that gather and fall away. Paint functions as a means of sensing rather than illustrating, allowing forms to emerge through an interplay of intuition, atmosphere and memory.
A recurring idea within Van den Berg’s practice is that of ‘fugitive marks’, the lingering traces of past events embedded within the land. These subtle prompts, whether a rise in the earth or a scatter of stones, drift between recognition and obscurity. Rather than reconstructing fixed narratives, the artist responds to such vestiges with a visual language that moves between abstraction and allegory, permitting the unresolved nature of the past to remain open.
Artworks
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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