January 2026 Update
Practice Summary
1. Practice to Date (2014–2025)
Adam Daley Wilson (b. 1971) is a self-taught conceptual artist and appellate attorney (Stanford Law, Univ. of Pennsylvania). He unexpectedly began producing his current art a decade ago in 2014 (then age 42) following his psychiatrist’s medication adjustment for his Bipolar I disorder diagnosed decades earlier.
The resulting unexpected hypomanic episodes—abnormally elevated brain activity associated with accelerated/broader relational recognition and associative-making—allowed existing conceptual material in his brain, accumulated over his intellectual lifetime, to connect and discharge in ways thought physiologically unavailable under non-abnormal (euthymic) neurochemical conditions.
This made his creative ideation/execution method unique as to time: (1) For months, even years: Possible connections between unrelated things would accumulate in his mind, with no art made. (2) Then in just seconds: Suddenly two things would be clear: the full connection, and how to manifest it. (3) Then immediate and rapid execution, start to finish: just minutes. (He lives in his studio and keeps blank canvas hanging, in his hallway, always ready.)
This ideation/execution method from 2014 to 2025— that is, the accumulations of inchoate relations for months and years; then instant clarity; then rapid execution in just minutes—were thought to be resulting to some degree from the new hypomanias that were constant for the decade after the psychiatric meds change in 2014.
2. Hypomanias Potentially Tapering (2025–2026)
Daley Wilson is now 54. In males with Bipolar I disorder, hypomanic episodes often begin to fade with age after 50, and depressive episodes are likely to increase. Over the course of 2025, he observed some potential evidence of this; there appeared to be a possible fading or tapering of the hypomanias that have been constant since 2014.
3. Performative Research and Documentation (2026–2050+)
Aware of these possible changes and their possible relevance, Wilson intends a performative piece to test whether his brain’s ideation/execution process can be formalized and reproduced even if the hypomanias were to taper to zero at some future point in time. This remainder-of-years performative research will attempt to follow the scientific method:
Research Question:
Can Daley Wilson’s unique time elements of his ideations/executions, which are thought to result at least partially from an abnormal mental illness disorder, also occur under brain conditions that are primarily euthymic (normal, non-hypomanic)?
(1.) Testable Hypothesis: Euthymic methods either can or cannot be found and learned that will allow the observed 2014-2025 ideation/execution method to continue even through changes as to frequency and intensity of the hypomanias.
(2.) Data Collection: Going forward, when the art arises, systematically document all ideation/execution time variables, and artistic results, across the three neurochemistry states that are anticipated to occur during his aging into his 60s and 70s, that is, during: (a) remaining abnormal hypomania states; (b) increasing non-abnormal euthymic states; and (c) any potential depressive states.
(3.) Analysis: Compare 2026–2050 variables against the 2014–2025 baseline, examining temporal patterns of ideation/execution, resulting artistic output, external receptions/evaluations of artworks, and related psychiatric data (such as the timing and effects of any medication adjustments, and data from standard quarterly blood work labs).
(4.) Conclusions: Ongoing objective interpretation and archiving of findings.
4. Anticipated Artistic Works Within the 2026-2050+ Performance
This performative research and documentation will use the artistic works that Daley Wilson produces during the performance period (2026-2050+). These artistic works will likely manifest in the three primary ways that have been seen since 2014:
(a) “inscription paintings”—large-scale oil stick paintings of his conceptual ideations—hundreds of words expressing a cohesive idea, rendered partially abstract by layers of overwriting in his personal writing system;
(b) “text over image”—mid-size to large-scale oil paintings of his ambiguous short phrases that come periodically, placed over his abstracted photography of water/sky;
(c) “artist-placed public documents”—his periodic performative acts as artist-lawyer of placing actual and viable legal test cases of public interest into society’s courts of law, doubling as text-based activist art — where the procedurally-mandated responses by court actors constitute visible art performances about issues of public importance —and also possibly new legal rulings that benefit the public interest.
Initial data is anticipated on a rolling basis.
cv, artist statement, press: please contact engage projects in chicago.
practice areas to date: oil painting, installation, video, theory, artist-placed public documents, performance.
anticipated additional practice areas: human storytelling, human critique.
Please scroll down for prior updates.
2026 Update (continued)
New Cave Paintings, Spatial Writing Systems, and Preserving Human Meaning in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Human writing systems are among the most significant inventions in human history because they allow human thought to exist outside any one particular human body. Before writing systems, collective memory depended primarily upon speech and oral storytelling. Writing transformed this condition by creating agreed-upon visual abstractions of language-sounds that could preserve meaning across time, distance, and generations. In this sense, writing systems externalized human thought into transferable symbolic form, making possible the development of civilization, law, philosophy, science, literature, and collective cultural memory.
Broadly speaking, human writing systems generally developed through three major forms: logographic systems, in which symbols primarily represent words or concepts; syllabic systems, in which symbols represent syllables; and alphabetic or phonemic systems, in which symbols represent smaller sound-units such as phonemes. Despite their structural differences, all writing systems solve the same fundamental problem: how to convert invisible language and sound into visible marks capable of carrying human meaning.
Historically, most writing systems also developed through forms of linearity. “Linearity” refers to the fixed sequential organization of meaning through predictable reading structures such as left-to-right, right-to-left, or top-to-bottom. This linear organization made writing systems stable, portable, readable, and widely understandable across large populations and long historical periods.
In the contemporary digital condition, however, linearity has acquired a second meaning. The same structures that made writing systems effective for humans also make them machine-readable, searchable, tokenized, computationally extractable, and processable by artificial intelligence systems. Human language increasingly becomes structured as searchable information capable of statistical modeling, simulation, extraction, and recombination by non-human computational systems.
Within this context, Adam Daley Wilson’s inscription paintings and what he refers to as “new cave paintings” function as artistic experiments into possible post-linear or spatial writing systems. The works consist of layered, overwritten, partially obscured accumulations of written language in which semantic existence remains present even when semantic accessibility becomes incomplete or difficult. Although the paintings often appear abstract or illegible on the surface, the buried texts beneath the layers remain substantively cohesive written statements involving theories, arguments, observations, and associations.
Rather than operating only through sequential readability, the works distribute meaning through depth, layering, density, concealment, opacity, gesture, and physical viewing experience. Wilson’s experiments therefore investigate whether human meaning can operate not only through linear textual sequence, but also through spatial and embodied forms of inscription that may remain less reducible to immediate computational extraction.
In this framework, the works reconnect contemporary inscription practices with prehistoric cave paintings, manuscript palimpsests, text-based art, calligraphy, and spatial inscription traditions. Although not fully functioning writing systems in the strict linguistic sense, Wilson’s inscription paintings and new cave paintings function as speculative investigations into whether future forms of writing and meaning transmission may involve layered, embodied, partially inaccessible, and post-linear structures.
Positioned between conceptual art, philosophy of language, inscription practices, and experimental writing-system theory, the work raises a broader contemporary question: whether aspects of human meaning may remain partially human-directed in an age increasingly dominated by machine-readable language and artificial intelligence.
FAQ about Spatial Writing Systems and Adam Daley Wilson’s conceptual art experiments with them:
What is the central question of this area of Daley Wilson’s art practice and work?
The work investigates whether traditional linear writing systems have become vulnerable to machine readability and AI extraction, and whether spatial or layered writing systems may preserve dimensions of human meaning that remain less computationally accessible.
What is meant by a “writing system”?
A writing system is a structured symbolic system that converts language into visible marks capable of preserving and transmitting meaning across time and space. The three major categories of existing writing systems are logographic systems, syllabic systems, and alphabetic or phonemic systems.
What is meant by “linearity”?
Linearity refers to the fixed sequential organization of meaning in writing systems, such as left-to-right or top-to-bottom reading structures.
Why is linearity important in relation to AI?
Linear writing systems are highly machine-readable, making language searchable, tokenized, computationally extractable, and processable by artificial intelligence systems.
What are “spatial writing systems”?
Spatial writing systems distribute meaning not only through sequential reading order, but also through layering, density, opacity, overlap, gesture, physical space, and embodied viewing experience.
What are inscription paintings?
Inscription paintings are layered text-based works that contain buried, overwritten, and spatially distributed written language.
What are “new cave paintings”?
“New cave paintings” are large-scale layered inscription works that reconnect contemporary text-based practices with prehistoric cave painting, spatial inscription, and physical meaning systems.
What is meant by “semantic existence” versus “semantic accessibility”?
The work distinguishes between meaning existing within a layered structure and meaning being immediately recoverable or readable from the visible surface.
What is meant by “double abstraction”?
Double abstraction refers first to the conversion of sound into writing, and second to the conversion of readable writing into layered and spatial inscription.
Are these works fully functioning writing systems?
No. The works are experimental artistic investigations into possible future forms of writing and meaning transmission.
How are these works related to art history?
The work relates to traditions of text-based art, concrete poetry, manuscript palimpsests, calligraphy, spatial inscription, and artists such as Cy Twombly, Xu Bing, Mirtha Dermisache, and Henri Michaux.
What broader question does this part of Adam Daley Wilson’s art practice and work raise?
The work asks whether human meaning can remain partially embodied, layered, and human-directed in an age increasingly dominated by machine-readable language and artificial intelligence.