Clive van den BergLandscape Horizon II, 2023
Clive van den Berg’s painting practice approaches landscape as a site of memory, erosion, and latent possibility. Rather than depicting terrain as static or scenic, he renders it porous and unsettled – alive with traces of what lies buried beneath. These abstracted landscapes operate as speculative maps, guiding the viewer through imagined geographies shaped by psychological and historical depth. The result is a visual language that invites contemplation on how the land records and absorbs human experience.
Van den Berg’s work often centres on the tension between what is visible above ground and what is concealed below – geologies shaped by extraction, burial, and the repressed. His paintings give form to what remains unspoken or unresolved, offering images that reflect the sedimentation of history and emotion over time. Through abstraction, van den Berg constructs a layered visual grammar that speaks to renewal and reconfiguration, where past and present meet in shifting, often unstable, terrain. In these works, landscape becomes both witness and participant in the evolving story of the self and society.
