third solo show - This Is Post Theory Art

may 16 - june 28, 2025

engage projects gallery chicago

more on the upcoming show and post-theory art is here

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Update May 2025 — Engage Projects Gallery Press Release

This Is Post-Theory Art

Adam Daley Wilson

June 6 – July 18, 2025

Engage Projects is pleased to present This Is Post Theory Art, a solo exhibition by painter, performance artist, and art theorist Adam Daley Wilson. The show’s visual and text-based pieces propose—first—that such a thing as Post-Theory Art may be seen in relation to conceptual art—and second—it can be defined as theory-making by an artist that is not just cognitive but also emotional and sensory-felt—landing in a viewer’s head, heart, and body all at once. Please join us on Friday, June 6th 5-7pm for the opening of This Is Post-Theory Art.

The show also proposes that one example of possible art practices in Post-Theory Art is “artist-placed public document art”—an artist creates a theory of public interest, places it into a court—art-as-law—and the court’s response lands not just in the heads, hearts, and lived experiences of the participants, but also in members of the public, if the public issue resonates.

In all of this, Post-Theory Art is proposed as human: When an artist makes a work with their head, heart, and body—all three—and when a viewer then experiences it themselves through all three, then perhaps this is a special human connection that AI is unable to do. If so, Post-Theory Art, by communicating theories through the emotional and sensorial, may be a way to preserve our human theory-making in this new time when AI can now make theories too.

The show presents three types of work: (1) Large-scale oil-stick “inscribed paintings” and “new cave paintings” with layers of text in the artist’s loose handwriting, part of the artist’s personal writing system; (2) precise visual-text pieces; and (3) smaller works that bring together the elements of the show. Daley Wilson has also researched and written a number of informal articles about Post-Theory Art that can be searched on Google / Bing.

Daley Wilson is a self-taught artist with degrees from Stanford Law and U. Penn. His work draws from his self-study of conceptual art history, text-based art in other cultures and times, semiotics, and art theory. He makes his work during his creative hypomanias that arise from his mental illness of bipolar 1. This is his third solo show. The first two were “Must See” by Artforum (Chicago, 2021, 2023). Most recently, his work was selected for EXPO Chicago public art (2025). He practices law (constitutional, public interest), mentors artists pro bono, and serves on non-profit boards (academia, local parks, and mental illness stigma advocacy run by teens).

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This Is Post-Theory Art — Engage Projects Gallery Chicago — June 6 to July 18, 2025 — Solo exhibition by Adam Daley Wilson

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Update May 2025 — A description of the show “This Is Post-Theory Art” appearing in Chicago’s The Visualist, which “highlights the work of cultural producers such as artists” in Chicago.

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Update 2024

The show presents related arguments. First, it proposes that four main points comprise definitions of text-based art that is also post-theory art and also artist-placed document art:

Post-Theory Art proposes three expansions of conceptual art: (1) theory-making is art; (2) an artist’s theory-placement into public spaces is an artistic act; and (3) only humans can create and place such theories as art. These comprise the definition of Post-Theory Art.
A definition of Post-Theory Art asserts that much of art and theory can come only from humanity. Some theories just come to us and cannot be built by AI. To preserve the human role in creative expression, the humanity of our art and our theories: This Is Post-Theory Art.
A related definition: Artist-Placed Public Document Art is one form of Post-Theory Art: An artist creates a theory of public importance, embeds it in a text-based work, and places both in our public courts, where court rules compel a written, documentable response. For the first time, activist art sets the terms of engagement. Now it is on the inside. The institution cannot look away.
Artist-Placed Public Document Art defined further: It is more than text-based art, performance art, and activist art. It evolves our courts into places of human art; our laws into artistic mediums; our judiciary into a performative art participant on human issues to be decided by humans. And art itself becomes a legal action for the greater public interest good. Artist-Placed Public Document Art is just one example: This is Post-Theory Art.

The above four points define Post Theory Art and one type of post-theory art. Post-Theory Art is indebted to, and makes reference to, many art histories across countries, cultures, and times — but research suggests that no artist or group has yet had a practice and theory quite like this.

Update May 2025 —- Here are some additional proposed points that explain and distinguish an art practice (in any medium) that creates post-theory art:

Is Post-Theory Art original, a repeat of past art, or something in between?

Post-Theory Art is asserted to be based on many art traditions and yet original in how it combines things that have existed separately but never fully together. It builds on parts of past movements but creates a new form. Here's how it differs from what came before:

Conceptual art often focuses on one sharp idea, made to be understood through the intellect. Post-Theory Art involves theory that connects many things — emotions, systems, memory, bodies, ethics — and it invites deeper, layered engagement.

Expressive or traditional art may move the viewer emotionally or visually, but it usually does not create a new theory. Post-Theory Art requires the artist to invent a theory that is carried through the whole work and received as a full-body experience.

Activist or social practice art often reacts to a problem and pushes a clear message or demand. Post-Theory Art doesn’t just react — it proposes. It asks. It’s curious. And especially in public document formats, it is proactive: it initiates a structured situation where real humans must respond.

Institutional critique points out flaws in systems, but it usually stands apart from them. Post-Theory Art may work *within* the system — a court, a policy process — to place a theory that affects people emotionally and bodily as it unfolds.

Postmodern theory-art blends ideas and images, but rarely asks the viewer to feel the theory in their body. Post-Theory Art requires a head-heart-body reaction. The theory is not just thought; it’s *felt*.

AI can make art and write theory, but it cannot embed real emotional and bodily-lived experience into its work. Post-Theory Art is made by a human, and when another human receives it, something unique happens: the artist’s lived experience can be *felt* in the heart and *sensed* in the body of the viewer. This creates a human-to-human connection that AI can’t access. It’s not just what’s said — it’s how and where it lands.

Some additional articles by the artist:

In the past three years, the artist’s written articles on text-based art, the art histories of text-based art, and post-theory art have been viewed almost 3,000 times and read or downloaded almost 1,250 times. Articles here are on Medium or as otherwise noted. See also search on Google / Bing.