Clive van den BergUnsettled Air V, 2024
‘Unsettled Air V’ continues Clive van den Berg’s exploration of the atmosphere as a repository for memory and emotion. In this series, the artist turns his gaze skyward, tracing the ephemeral qualities of air, vapour, and dust as metaphors for the unseen forces that shape our inner and outer worlds. The painting captures the tension between weight and weightlessness where clouds are tinted with the residue of the earth, and dust, once grounded, is swept into suspension. This act of transference becomes a gesture of remembrance, suggesting that what rises into the air carries with it the trace of what has been.
For Van den Berg, air is not empty space, but a mutable substance animated by light, shadow, and movement. Its fleeting nature mirrors the qualities of paint itself, which shifts in character with every brushstroke, wash, or glaze. In ‘Unsettled Air V’, the surface shimmers with subtle tonal shifts, conjuring the sensation of something just out of reach – evocative yet intangible. As with much of his work, the painting resists containment. Instead, it invites viewers into a suspended space where emotional registers are felt as atmosphere, and memory is held not in form but in movement.
