South Gallery

William Conger is a Chicago-based, American painter and educator, known for a dynamic, subjective style of abstraction descended from Kandinsky.

William Conger's unique paintings represent an on-going investigation of abstraction that subtly fuses figural and landscape references to a vocabulary of irregular geometric forms. Conger's paintings are a process of linear and color discovery. He connects shapes by stringing them together along linear paths. The linear connections create a web of ambiguous positive or negative space, figure or ground. This enables him to modulate the shapes, add atmosphere, play with illogical light and allude to things in a suggestive way. By this means his work carries classical abstraction into a new visual territory.

Conger has shown at the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (MCA), the Krannert Art Museum, and Jonson Museum, and in numerous solo exhibitions in Chicago and beyond. His work has been discussed in national publications such as Artforum, Art in America, Arts Magazine, and ARTnews, He has been recognized by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, City of Chicago Public Commissions, inclusion in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, and purchases by public and private collections. In addition to his art career, Conger has taught and chaired art departments at DePaul University and Northwestern University, and written about art.

Image: William Conger - "Aries", 2022, oil on panel, 16 in. diameter