5/15/14

ABH#5/William Conger



William Conger, Mappa Mundi, Gouache on Rag Paper, 8 inches diameter, 2014.

William Conger’s paintings are snapshots of a world going too fast…Each work, however, includes little, hidden moments of hope and clarity – his visions convey the sites and sounds of an individual grappling with so much around him, determined to make some sense of it all.  William Conger makes art in Chicago.  Chicago is lucky to have him.


From the artist:
English Medieval artist, map maker and chronicler, Benedictine Monk Matthew Paris (c.1200-1259) made symbolic “T-O maps” of the world. They were circular maps divided horizontally through the middle and then vertically from the center to the bottom. The exact center represented Jerusalem while the upper half represented Asia (including the Garden of Eden; the lower left represented Europe and the remaining lower right represented the northern coast of Africa). Surrounding the circumference, the (flat?) earth was water and, beyond that, Heaven and Hell. Amazingly, such abstract maps may have been used for travel, as for crusaders. Providing only a hint of geography, the T-O maps guided by means of symbolic notations that were intended to evoke much fuller verbal knowledge based on experience and scripture. Matthew Paris said he drew so that “the ear hears what the eyes may see”.

My Mappa Mundi, for the “Anywhere But Here” exhibition freely uses Matthew Paris’ T-O map format. My abstract shapes and textured colors are intended to imply that abstract painting also evokes a personal language or narrative that may explain an image as if it were something else even though it maps nothing in the world.