Zolla/Lieberman Gallery is proud to present two concurrent solo exhibitions by two noteworthy Chicago-based artists, Vera Klement and William Conger, the newest addition to our roster.

“Early & Late Work,” an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Vera Klement, will be the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. During her over 50-year career, Klement has placed equal importance on color and composition as the development of imagery related to time, memory, and human experience. The work on view provides the ingredients for a subjective experience by pairing open-ended, dichotomous elements such as a gestural splatter of paint and an ambiguous vessel, or a textured color field and isolated architectural fragments.

“From the beginning I experienced a sense of duality – the bright light and rhythmic pounding of the sea, and there, rising behind it, the dark forest that held in its silence the northern European legends of evil spirits…Light and dark, good and evil, life and death. That juxtaposition that eventually became the underpinning of my painting…” – Vera Klement

“New Paintings,” William Conger’s inaugural exhibition at Zolla/Lieberman, features oil paintings on canvas or wood, all created within the past year. Conger continues his lifelong investigation of formal non-representational abstraction nuanced by the suggestion of illusionism to evoke an ambiguous welter of private and cultural memories, allusions, feelings, places and events.

“I want viewers to confront my paintings as visual metaphors of their own experiences and imaginative creativity, just as I do. Further, we can also pretend that painting, as an art, has its own experiences, feelings, and history. With that in mind, I would like viewers to imagine their own sensibilities being merged with art. We can pretend that shapes and colors have their art-historical biographies which we can adopt as our own surrogates, too.” – William Conger

Vera Klement (b. 1929, The Free City of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland)) has lived and worked in Chicago since 1964 and her work has been shown and collected extensively across the country. Recent exhibitions include solo exhibitions at the Rockford Museum of Art, Rockford, IL, and the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO, and group exhibitions at Governors State University, University Park, IL, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL. Public collections include The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Illinois State Museum, Springfield, IL; Museum of American Art, Smithsonian, Washington, DC; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL. In years past, Klement has been the recipient of multiple grants and other awards, including the Camargo Foundation Residency and Stipend, Cassis, France (2006) and the Pollock-Krasner Grant (1998).
William Conger (b. 1937, Dixon, IL) work has been displayed widely in significant venues including recent solo exhibitions at the Cedarhurst Center for the Arts, Mt. Vernon, IL, the Union League of Chicago, Chicago, IL, and the Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL. His work is in numerous permanent collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Illinois State Museum, Springfield, IL; the Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, IL The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, WI; and is included in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art, Washington, DC; and Northwestern University Library Archives, Evanston, IL.
Zolla Lieberman Gallery
325 West Huron, Chicago, IL 60654, 312.944.1990
www.zollaliebermangallery.com/

Gallery Hours: Tues–Fri 10:00a.m.–5:30p.m. / Sat 11a.m.–5:30p.m. / Admission: Free

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Tags: River North, Vera Klement, William Conger, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery