You've likely seen the larger-than-life Eland sculpture erected in Braamfontein, but do you know the artist behind it? Follow this four-legged creature down Bertha Street and you'll come to the corner of the Wits Art Museum (WAM) where Clive van den Berg, the artist behind this giant buck that acts as a gateway to the city, has a retrospective exhibition.
Porous is a survey of van den Berg's work over more than 30 years, circling around his two primary 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," reads the exhibition text. "What makes van den Berg's practice distinct is his interest in the porous – porous skin and porous land."
With the identification of the HIV virus in the 1980s, the artist became acutely aware of the permeable nature of skin. "From that time I began to re-imagine my body as a porous thing, vulnerable to an invisible and incomprehensible threat," he says. "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."
Through painted and sculptural works van den Berg explores the enduringly uneasy relationship between what's familiar and seen above ground and the altogether more mysterious landscapes below; the realm of geology and mining, as well as burial and the repressed. The past and present meet in his unique, pictorial language, where repressed memories are given voice and "the underneath" is given shape.
Join WAM for the opening of Porous on Tue, Aug 27 from 18:00, with an introductory talk by van den Berg. Parking for the event is available in the garage beneath the museum on a pre-arranged basis; email julia.charlton@wits.ac.za
