Updated January 2026
Overview: Artist-Placed Public Document Art and the Local Rule of Law
Context: Broader Works and Theories to Date
Adam Daley Wilson (b. 1971, US) is a conceptual artist and appellate lawyer. As a conceptual artist, his works and theories to date may be understood as suggesting that human theory-making by human artists, now in the age and context of artificial intelligence, might function as what he calls "post-theory art"—human-made theories communicated by artists, in any medium, to other humans, in ways that are not just cognitive (thoughts) but also in ways that are emotional and sensorial—that is, landing in the human recipient's head, heart, and body all at once.
While music and other mediums may allow this most clearly, Daley Wilson's works may be seen as experiments to see if conceptual text-based art can achieve this too. If so, perhaps this approach may position human-artistic theory-making as something that may be difficult for AI to replicate, at least for some time, as, perhaps, human-made theories that are received from an artist by other humans, when embedded with humanness (emotion, feeling, intuition, embodiment, and even imperfection) may be among things that AI (at least currently) struggles to understand or authentically emulate.
In this new and fundamentally different era of artificial intelligence (what some of Wilson’s works reference as "empty intelligence"), this possible head-heart-body approach to human theory-making and human-to-human communication, through artistic mediums, may possibly offer one method, among hopefully others, to protect, or at least document, our distinctly human aspects of considering, documenting, and proposing human knowledge to each other in ways that transcend any one culture, society, or time.
Artistic Ideation/Execution Methods to Date
Daley Wilson's conceptual work typically manifest across oil painting (inscription paintings, personal writing system works; and text-over-image pieces); performance art; and, relevant here, what he terms “artist-placed public document art” defined as actually legal documents that he files (places) in public courts that function as both performative text-based art as well the catalyst for institutional critique.
In all of his ideations/executions, his art process involves both logical-cognitive and intuitive-associational-leap layers that are built on inchoate but plausible connections that he sees over time between things normally considered far apart. Daley Wilson, and the conceptual art gallery that has represented him since 2020 (Engage Projects, Chicago) attribute at least some of this ideation/execution method to hypomanic episodes arising from his Bipolar I disorder, which appears to cause increased electrical connectivity resulting in broader relation recognition and association-making in both extended and compressed time windows: Months or years of inchoate contemplation, then an instant insight, then execution of the work within minutes.
Apart from this unique ideation/execution method, the resulting physical works fall within recognized categories of conceptual art, post-conceptual art, and text-based art traditions that trace back to the 1960s in the United States, among other traditions, referencing text-based conceptual artists such as Kruger, Holzer, Ruscha, Wool, Kosuth, and Weiner, among others, using ideations and text-language that is never appropriated by Wilson; they come suddenly, almost always fully-formed, in the instant insights after his months and years of inchoate process.
Artist-Placed Public Documents As Working Within Established Traditions
What Daley Wilson describes as artist-placed public documents may be seen as both within, and as an extension of, two traditions: (a) the tradition in law of bringing legal test cases on open questions in the law, in order to improve the public’s laws in the public interest; and (b) the traditions in conceptual art, post-conceptual art, and text-based art in relation to emerging neo-conceptual art practices of the 1980s and 1990s and new genres art practices since then.
His literal placement of test-case legal theories into public courts, doubling as visual activist text-based artworks—may be seen as an extension both natural and original as to working within established art and law traditions of institutional critique. What appears to be new is that, for the first time, theories of public interest are not only (a) actually embedded in institutional systems; but also (b) courts, judges, and attorneys become both audience and actors in a performance about matters of public interest, and are compelled to do so by procedural law, as discussed in more detail later on this page. It is this mandatory aspect—compelled response due to the public court’s own procedural rules—that is both within existing traditions and also an extension that is new. Wilson appears to be the first artist, or artist-lawyer, exploring whether institutional response and critique can be compelled through the artwork itself—on matters of public importance—that are both transparent and documented, for the public and press to see.
This dual structure—Daley Wilson's artist-lawyer act of filing a formal and valid legal test case on a matter of public interest, causing a mandatory and compelled institutional response—removes, perhaps for the first time, the institution’s ability to ignore the artwork, such as in the case of a protest before an institution. Institutions had the ability to simply decline participation; institutions of power, and in particular institutions of public power, appear to have exercised this approach in prior examples of attempted direct institutional critique, at least in the United States over the past half-century. As such, the “artist-placed public document” practice within both art and law appears to possibly generate elements of law-as-art and art-as-law that could benefit the public good through a merging of art-as-activism, performance art, text-based art, public interest law, and institutional critique within systems that may remain primarily human—the courts applying human-made law. In other words, if courts, judges, and officers of the court (attorneys) turn out to be one of the last places of humanity in the new age of AI, then Daley Wilson’s art-law practice of “artist-placed public document art” may be at least one of the ways that the public and press can see how courts and especially lawyers comport themselves, and the rule of law, in these last of truly human places.
Details: Artist-Placed Public Document Art and The Local Rule of Law
Working Within Conceptual Art Traditions
As suggested above, what Adam Daley Wilson has termed or coined as artist-placed public document art appears to operate within established traditions of conceptual art, post-conceptual art, and text-based art that emerged in the 1960s and continued through neo-conceptual practices of the 1980s and 1990s. “Artist-placed public document art” may be defined as an artist's formal submission of legally viable documents into courts, where those documents function simultaneously as (a) legitimate legal filings on matters of public interest and (b) the performative art of placing text-based artworks into institutional actors for those actors to respond—courts, judges, and attorneys as officers of our public courts—as they must do as a result of being required or compelled to do so as a function of the public court’s own procedural rules.
No matter the procedural or substantive outcome, this feature of required response, arising from the institution’s own rules, causes the first performance by the artist-lawyer (placing the initiating lawsuit into the court) to initiate a second performance—the public and transparent performance by the institutional actors as to how they comport themselves with respect to following the substantive and procedural rules of public law in responding to the public interest test case law suit. The public and the press receive a transparent documentation of an institutional performance about a matter of public interest.
The Dual Art-as-Law and Law-As-Art Nature Of Artist-Placed Public Documents
While Daley Wilson is both a lawyer and an artist, any artist, and any person, may file such cases pro-se; one does not need to be a lawyer, so long as the court filing is compliant, viable, and non-frivolous under existing substantive and procedural law. In Wilson’s circumstance, as a dual conceptual artist and appellate lawyer, he files legally sound complaints presenting what appear to be viable test cases on issues of first impression before the courts—unsettled areas of law tested through properly-pleaded claims that propose to advance existing legal statutes, case law, and doctrines in incremental ways that could expand existing law for the benefit of the general public interest. As an artist apart from lawyer, the same act may be seen in a second or dual way, constituting a performative artwork within traditions of conceptual art, post-conceptual art, and the performative pieces of conceptual artists, particularly in the United States and Europe since the 1960s.
A valid legal complaint in a dual role as text-based art—and a performative piece of conceptual art in a dual role as filing a legal document that requires a compelled response under public procedural rules of court. Art in text form, created and authored by an artist, expressing legally valid theories to expand and improve the legal system at the local-rule-of-law level with respect to matters of public interest. The filing may be understood as the performance within traditions established by conceptual artists in the 1960s who questioned what art could be. The institutional response could complete the artwork through documentation of how courts engage with or evade questions.
The Local Rule of Law Concept
Wilson has coined what he calls "the local rule of law" to describe how the rule of law appears to operate unevenly across geographic and institutional microclimates—a concept that does not appear to have been widely discussed in legal or art scholarship. In some counties and courthouses it may function robustly; in others it could become compromised by attorney misconduct that goes unchecked. When attorneys lie to courts, abuse discovery, or weaponize bias and stigma, they may corrupt judicial processes. If pervasive, this could create what might function as dual-state legal systems within jurisdictions—ethical parties operating under proper constraints while some attorneys manipulate processes.
Wilson's test cases appear to focus on what he describes as attorney exploitation of mental illness stigma, presenting facts and evidence in complaints that may prompt courts to confront whether such exploitation violates civil rights. The institutional responses are documented in public records, creating what could be understood as evidentiary archives that may expose how the local rule of law functions in specific microclimates.
Extending Established Traditions
What Wilson describes may synthesize law, art, and theory as inseparable elements within established traditions of conceptual art, post-conceptual art, and text-based art. The legal work may be understood as art because it appears to involve original theory-making and because filing could be understood as performance—concepts rooted in 1960s conceptual art traditions. The art may be understood as law because it seems to operate through legitimate legal mechanisms. The theory may be both because it appears to exist simultaneously as legal argument and artistic concept within traditions established by artists like Kosuth and Weiner who prioritized ideas over objects.
Work Product 3: The Dual Performance Structure and Procedural Compulsion
Performance One: The Artist's Act of Placement
The first performance appears to occur when Wilson files a legal complaint in court—a physical act of submitting documents, paying fees, serving defendants. This act has legal significance: it appears to initiate a lawsuit and start proceedings. This performance can be executed by anyone through pro se rules. The performance appears to function simultaneously as legal action and artistic action—an approach that may draw from conceptual art traditions of the 1960s and 1970s where artists questioned what art could be. The complaint is authored language constructed to convey theories. The courthouse may function as gallery, the docket as catalog—concepts that appear to extend institutional critique traditions established by Haacke, Asher, and others in the late 1960s.
Performance Two: What May Be Compelled Response
The second performance—what may be an extension of conceptual art traditions—appears to occur through procedural compulsion. Once Wilson files, Federal and state procedural rules seem to mandate responses. Defendants appear to be required to respond within specified timeframes or face default judgment. Courts appear to be required to rule on motions. This may create what could be understood as procedural compulsion—institutional actors becoming participants not by choice but by legal mandate. They appear required to engage with the text-based work. Defense attorneys file motions—authored texts engaging with or avoiding the theories. Judges issue orders and opinions—authored texts either addressing substantive issues or dismissing procedurally. Filings and written words may become documented performance—an approach that appears to extend traditions of performance art and happenings from the 1960s and 1970s.
How This May Extend Conceptual Art Traditions
Research suggests no prior artist has been documented as compelling institutional response in this particular manner within conceptual art, post-conceptual art, or text-based art traditions. Haacke used existing documents but did not appear to file documents requiring response; the Guggenheim canceled his show. Fraser performed institutional critiques; museums could decline. Guerrilla Girls created external pressure; museums could ignore them. Young creates experimental legal instruments as artworks, not actual court filings triggering mandatory response. In what appears to be prior institutional critique within conceptual art traditions, institutions may have retained control—they could refuse participation, cancel exhibitions, ignore pressure.
Wilson's practice may extend these traditions established in the 1960s and continuing through neo-conceptual art of the 1980s and 1990s by using procedural law in ways that appear to eliminate institutional ability to decline. Courts cannot refuse properly filed complaints. Defendants cannot choose not to respond without default. The artwork may have what appears to be binding procedural force. This seems to be among what may be the first documented instances within conceptual art, post-conceptual art, and text-based art traditions where an artist appears able to compel institutions to respond to artistic statement through procedural force—an approach that appears to extend institutional critique traditions while working within established conceptual art practices rather than creating entirely new forms of art.
May 28, 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.
May 2025 — Gallery Press Release —- Third Solo Show
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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Backstory and More Info
Adam Daley Wilson (b. 1971) is a self-taught conceptual artist represented by ENGAGE Projects Gallery in Chicago. He lives and works in Portland Maine.
His work manifests in oil painting, installations, video, and performance. He is also an emerging art theorist.
Daley Wilson’s practice blends cognitive and intuitive processes where he uses language in both legible texts and abstract personal writing systems to experiment with meaning-making and viewer interpretation.
His works are informed by his traditional education (Stanford Law, University of Pennsylvania) and his bipolar 1: Neurologically, when in hypomanias, his naturally high levels of dopamine and serotonin cause increased electrical connectivity in the frontal and temporal lobes, causing increased abilities to see relations, connections, and associations between things normally seen as far apart.
Daley Wilson’s works are in collections in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Miami, and Chicago, and both solo shows so far were Artforum “Must See” shows in Chicago (2021, 2023).
His work in art theory and art philosophy includes a top-10 paper in the Fine Arts, Aesthetics, and Philosophy Journals of SSRN (2024), and he has served on the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Doctoral Studies in Visual Art, an international PhD program for artists. He continues to brief issues in Art Law, Constitutional Law, the First Amendment, and the Visual Artists’ Rights Act.
On the basis of his shows, the Berlin-based advisory Artfacts lists him in the top 5% of artists associated with post-conceptualism, conceptual painting, text-based art, and activist art.
As a self-taught artist indebted to mentors since his unexpected start in 2014, after a meds change by his psychiatrist, he informally mentors emerging artists in the US and several countries.
Categories of Theory Art and Post-Theory Pieces at ENGAGE Projects Gallery Chicago
Oil Text Paintings
Abstract Personal Writing System Paintings
Oil Text Paintings On Photography
Installations and Performance
Selected Press and Publications
Third solo show THIS IS POST-THEORY ART reviewed in New City Art (Chicago) June 26, 2025
Second solo show THIS IS TEXT BASED ART featured in Mousse Magazine (Italy) in its “curated roundup of the best contemporary art exhibitions and events held by galleries, museums, and institutions in town during [EXPO Chicago 2023],” 4/10/23
Second solo show THIS IS TEXT BASED ART on Artforum’s must see list, 2023
First solo show ALREADY GONE on Artforum’s must see list, 2021
First solo show ALREADY GONE reviewed in New Art Examiner (Chicago), March 2021
NBC New Center Maine features, 2/16/21 and 2/23/21
Conceptual Theory Art as a Method for Interdisciplinary Research, Hypothesis, and Critical Analysis Both Within and Beyond Traditional Western Social Sciences (August 01, 2024). Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4913371
Selected Post-Theory Performance Pieces and Happenings
If You Let Yourself Think About It (Theory Art Piece 1). Artist’s physical act of placing a VARA-qualifying text-based visual artwork, about a social justice legal theory of first impression in the United States, within the Supreme Court of a State, causing the justices to be both audience and actors in a happening about journalism as art and legal theory as art, 2023-2024.
Theory As Art, Journalism As Art, Law As Art (Theory Art Pieces 2, 3, 4). Ongoing placements of VARA-qualifying text artworks within judicial branches and courts, each causing happenings within courts as to the art of journalism, the art of law, and theory as art, 2023-2026.
Look At What We Have Created II. Live creation of personal writing system painting and happening with roughly 20 viewer-participants, second solo show, during EXPO Chicago, 2023.
Do You Own Conceptual Ownership? 4-day performance with video, installation, tangible art ownership experiment, and conceptual social justice ownership experiment. Guest artist project by invitation. The Other Art Fair New York, Nov. 8-11, 2018.
Some Feelings And Thoughts I’ll Have Any Second. 4-day performance with installation and conceptual video. The Other Art Fair New York, Nov. 18-22, 2017.
Look At What We Have Created. 12.25-hour performance walk through New York City, overnight, playing 6 tracks of audio from artist’s backpack, creating layers of words from academics personally known by the artist discussing issues from mass incarceration to LGBTQ+ rights, until the overlapping audio layers rendered the spoken words meaningless, Nov. 22-23, 2017.
Pending Post-Theory Art and Performance Art Subject Matter Area (2025-2026) —- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Hr1fmK7IZEy3bv48Qo8rg6tYxFwXPmN5/view?usp=sharing
Some Critique and Debate Articles about Post-Theory Art and Artist-Placed Public Document Art
Some initial critiques are here.
Some initial debates are here.