Tucked away in the South Gallery at Zolla Lieberman William Conger exhibited a collection of recent paintings created between 2021 and 2024. The title “Night and Day” sets the framework for viewers to access the work. Conger examines themes of light, darkness, time, and place using his iconic Allusive Abstraction style. The shapes are geometric, but their organization and colors make references to his themes using a visual language comprised of shapes and colors.

        Conger’s style has endured throughout his career. The Allusive Abstractionists formed in the 1980s in Chicago following the trail of the Imagists. Allusive Abstraction applies the vibrant playfulness of the Imagists to abstract forms in a sort of abstract expressionist revival. Conger uses more geometric abstract shapes than other Allusive Abstractionists to reference his specific themes, ideas, or places.

        The day themed paintings have bright colors that almost radiate light. The painting Lake Effect feels like a map of Chicago. A long prominent line with the building-like shapes on the left it is reminiscent of Lakeshore Drive, and the curved lines evoke the cold wind coming off the water. Conger’s dark colored paintings have darker themes, the night in contrast to the day portion of the exhibition. Nocturnal has a particularly structureless organization of shapes making it more psychological than the other works.

        These darker works recall Conger’s early paintings that have a glowing quality like a velvet blacklight painting. The brushstrokes in these newer pieces are not as wild as they are in the early dark paintings. Instead, they are more restrained within the crisp edges of the shapes. The activity of the brush in each shape creates different stories or facets, adding texture or movement like windswept clouds or ripples of light on water. The inclusion of these brushstrokes breaks the rigidity of the shapes’ structure and incorporates a painterly quality that keeps the work from becoming flat or minimal.

        On the other hand, Conger’s vibrant colored works are bright and inviting. The darker images have more subtle colors that are calming. His shapes and lines are precise, but they are not rigid. These shapes are used to build an abstract language that becomes more apparent as the viewer compares the works with each other.

        The group Solar, Dusk and October reveal a visual language of the repetition of shapes that could represent the sun on the horizon. Although the color pallet matches that of the night images, the paintings Dusk and Dog Day have formal and thematic connections to the day paintings.

        Conger’s paintings rely on their titles as the key to interpreting the work. It’s hard to tell if the titles change the way the paintings are seen. Can their meaning be gleaned without the titles? The bright warm yellow and sky-blue colors in Solar are sun-like but after reading the title a vague and fragmented landscape seems to emerge. Allusive Abstraction allows the viewer to lean into an imaginative way of looking at abstract forms.

        Conger’s “Night and Day” was a great examination of the painter’s recent works. The small gallery contained such an array of work that it left me hoping to see a larger retrospective in the future.

Rebecca Memoli is a Chicago-based photographer and curator. She received her BFA from Pratt Institute and her MFA in Photography from Columbia College. Her work has been featured in several national and international group shows.