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| 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.
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