Adam Daley Wilson — Post-conceptual Works In Context — 2024

Adam Daley Wilson — Works In Context

This essay argues that Daley Wilson’s pieces may be seen not just individually but also as multi-work cohesive inquiries. To argue this, the essay considers six pieces that are cohesive in this way. The oil paintings I Feel So Much Better Now (We All Like to Look Away Sometimes) (2021), Species Anosognosia, (2017), I Could Not Forget You More (2021), I Forgot That I Should Care (2018), Baby I Just Don’t Care (2024), and Let Us Look Away (2024) together offer the viewer a comprehensive narrative argument that observes and comments upon (a) human behavior at the collective and universal level, (b) the human species and its relationship with other species, and © the human species and its relationship with the entire planet itself. This essay will consider not only the visual and textual elements of these artworks but also their thematic scope and overall impact on the viewer, including by situating the pieces within the broader contexts of art history, art theory, philosophy, and science.

As to their visuals, Daley Wilson’s pieces are a compelling blend of visual and textual elements to convey substantive messages at both the cognitive and emotional levels. The (mostly) serene backgrounds, often depicting vast horizons reminiscent of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s seascapes, provide a contrast to the unsettling text — that is, if the viewer elects to interpret the ambiguous texts that way. This juxtaposition, at the broadest of levels, can be said to present a mirror to us as humans, showing the dissonance between the beauty of the natural world and the troubling human actions and attitudes that are now (shows the scientific evidence, beyond dispute) destroying the natural world. The use of text across these visuals echoes the work of Ed Ruscha and Barbara Kruger, employing language not for humor (Ruscha) but as a powerful tool to provoke thought and elicit emotional responses (but beyond the narrower western-consumer-political activism of Kruger). Daley Wilson’s intentions through the serene backgrounds that he chooses may also be seen to serve as a visual metaphor for the superficial calm, and our mechanisms for relief, that humans often seek in the face of deep-seated moral issues — when we know what we are doing is wrong. This technique broadly references Ruscha’s use of text in his landscape visuals, where the words serve to disrupt the viewer’s engagement with the idyllic scene and introduce an element of critical reflection, but, to date, Daley Wilson’s works appear to reject the use of text-based art for mere humor, irony and word play. Something bigger, possibly much bigger, seems to be on Daley Wilson’s mind.

I Feel So Much Better Now (We All Like to Look Away Sometimes) is a 10-foot by 5-foot oil (oil painted text on image on canvas, then varnished) that opens this essay with a tranquil oceanic background, evoking the visual and emotional sense of calm and serenity, as referenced above. However, on its face, the text, ambiguous on a second reading — I Feel So Much Better Now — suggests not genuine or well-earned relief, but rather only a superficial relief, possibly from avoiding confronting uncomfortable truths, as the parenthetical of the title might allow the viewer to interpret. This first piece speaks to the (arguably increasing) human tendency to seek false solace in pure ignorance or empty distraction, even while (still) knowingly committing moral and ethical wrongs. The viewer is invited, gently and ambiguously, to interpret and reflect upon the disparity between the visual calmness and the underlying disquiet suggested by the text, a theme that Daley Wilson develops in many subsequent works. This work, in particular, exemplifies how Daley Wilson’s art uses viewer interpretation to more powerfully introduce inquiries into the psychological mechanisms of human avoidance and denial, including in the face of human wrongs, inviting viewers to confront their complicity in moral, ethical, societal, cultural, environmental, and global issues.

Species Anosognosia is an 8-foot by 5-foot piece (oil stick on black canvas) that is an urgent scrawl of both legible and illegible words — all of them Daley Wilson’s own words — set down by him, in his handwritten personal writing system (PWS), as a singular declaratory statement about the overwhelming evidence of humanity’s collective malfeasance in relation to humanity’s collective intentional denial. Anosognosia, a psychiatric medical term that denotes a symptom associated with severe mental illness — a lack of awareness that one is very sick — is the twist here: The piece, though urgent in looks, is deadly calm and logical in substance: In a complete paragraph, it articulates the argument that we humans are not lacking awareness — we know that we are sick, we know that we are causing harm — to ourselves, to our offspring, to other species and their offspring, and to the planet — and yet we still knowingly do it. The piece may be seen, in this light, as a singular critique of our collective cognitive dissonance and willful blindness. The piece may also be seen as the first time anyone, let alone an artist, thought to extrapolate the mental illnesses that we assign by diagnosis to the particular individual, one person at a time, here instead to the entire species as a whole. (Daley Wilson, who has a diagnosed mental illness of bipolar 1, and who does have insight, apparently made this associative leap — to apply to the entire species the diagnoses we ascribe to the individual — during one of his minor hypomanias (mild manias) during which his mental illness allows him to make many of the unique connections and parallels seen in his works). (For further works also related to Species Anosognosia, but not relevant to this essay, see, e.g., Species Narcistica (2019)). As Species Anosognosia visually demonstrates, and as this summary itself shows, the (at first blush) visual disarray of the work mirrors humanity’s intentional, and perhaps inevitable, mental confusion and anguish, compelling the viewer to interpret and navigate through the textual maze to uncover the deeper meaning. This presentation recalls the textual interventions of Christopher Wool, whose large-scale text works similarly demand a heightened level of engagement from the viewer, with the piece also referencing Mel Bochner, Glenn Ligon, William Pope.L, Adam Pendelton, and, even more broadly, Cy Twombly and Robert Rauchenberg.

I Could Not Forget You More (10-foot by five-foot oil on image on canvas, then varnished) features a highly blurred seascape, inviting the viewer to interpret it as symbolizing the fading relevance of humanity as a species when considered against the long arc of the lifespan of the planet itself. As a writing by Daley Wilson himself explains, the profoundly ambiguous text may be interpreted to assert that, despite humanity’s self-anointed self-importance, the planet and its surviving species will move on without a moment’s hesitation once we are gone, forgetting humanity’s existence to a level so deep that we, as humans with our egos, cannot begin to comprehend how the planet will move on. As such, this piece introduces a profound sense in the curious viewer of impermanence and insignificance, challenging anthropocentric views seen across human cultures and philosophies that we matter, and that we matter most, and inviting a perspective found perhaps only in Native American and other indigenous peoples who learned a sustainable balance with nature before modern humans, across the continents, exterminated them. In this, Daley Wilson may be suggesting that, just as the planet could not forget us more, so too we in our genocides could not have forgotten any more profoundly the wisdom in the cultures we destroyed and work so stridently to erase from our individual and societal minds.

I Forgot That I Should Care (8-foot by 5-foot oil painted text on an altered appropriated Cowboy re-photograph by Richard Prince) adds to the theme of these six pieces by focusing on humanity’s wholesale erosion, or even intentional abandonment, of empathy and responsibility. Here again, the serene natural landscape — severed by Prince’s re-photography masking tape — affords an interpretation as a fractured and broken natural backdrop to the text’s declaratory reminder of our fundamental moral failure. Together, the elements imply an intentional societal amnesia, and an I-could-care-less-about-it attitude, regarding humanity’s willingness to jettison its core duty — to care for the world, and future generations, so that there is a world for the future generations of the species to live in and survive. Here again, the juxtaposition of the idyllic Hollywood scenery with the unambiguous message underscores the piece’s theme of profound neglect and moral decay. This work, too, can be seen as part of a broader discourse on the Anthropocene, a term used by scientists to describe and identify the current geological age, defined as the period during which human activity has been the dominant — and decidedly negative — influence on an entire planet’s now and future climate and global ecosystem. In this light, Daley Wilson’s piece is far more than the narrow interpretation — that we forgot what the cigarette companies like Marlboro did to us, and our children, when they mythologically wrapped themselves in the imagery of the American Cowboy (itself a myth, as history shows) — rather, Daley Wilson’s piece prompts viewers to consider a more universal and more painful interpretation — our roles in causing this Anthropocene epoch, the consequences of it, the apparent fact that we could care less, and the ethical and moral implications of all of this, including in the context of what our major religions purport to consider sacred.

Baby I Just Don’t Care (7-feet by 5-feet, oil on canvas) may be interpreted as daring the viewer to enjoy the superficial and to ignore the truth. It features a bold, confrontational text (capitalized Arial bold, which is Daley Wilson’s signature typography for such pieces) against a stark black background, highlighting an interpretation of our blatant disregard for consequences that we have caused. Arguably, the piece may be seen as capturing the essence of western nihilism and cultural selfishness prevalent in both individuals and in the collective in contemporary western society — and perhaps all modern societies, in that, through variations of capitalism and globalism, we are really at this point all just one in the same. This work, in the context of the other five in this essay, is a direct critique of humanity’s cultural, political, moral, and religious failures. The minimalist approach emphasizes the starkness of the message, stripping away any distractions and forcing the viewer to confront the raw sentiment — and yet leaving it to the viewer to decide whether to interpret the piece as glib and trite or as profoundly sad. Visually, the piece recalls the blunt declarative statements of Jenny Holzer’s Truisms, where the power of the message lies in its unadorned presentation, as well as the text-as-grid-formation pieces of Christopher Wool, with the visual difference being Daley Wilson’s use of capitalized Arial bold, as discussed above, compared to Wool’s use of capitalized stencil.

Let Us Look Away (10-foot by 5-foot oil text on image on canvas, then varnished) concludes the series discussed in this essay with another serene depiction — this time a depiction of clouds and open sky, inviting viewers to again reflect on escapism. Here again, ambiguous text: It could mean anything, but, upon a scholarly viewing, the piece uses a rhetorical device commonly found in religions to subtly, but forcefully, direct the viewer to respond and act in a certain way: Here, let us, as the priests say, let us look away — from the damage we are causing, from our willingness to ignore what we have done, to enjoy what we have done, even though it harms our future offspring unlike any other species does upon this earth — let us look away, suggesting to the curious viewer that such avoidance is nothing short of a form of complicity. To look away is to be an accomplice. To aid and abet. To join. Visually, the expansive sky may be seen as symbolizing the vastness of our ignorance and the ease with which we as humans can all too easily turn away from the moral course of action we profess to value each Sunday when priests worldwide command us with their phrase, let us pray.

With these six works in mind, this essay considers them together. Daley Wilson’s works can be situated within the broader discourse of conceptual and post conceptual art. They draw from minimalism’s aesthetic simplicity and postminimalism’s emphasis on process and materiality. The appropriation of text and imagery aligns them with artists like Ed Ruscha, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Glenn Ligon, Christopher Wool, Richard Prince, and others. Ruscha’s work often features text integrated with imagery, creating a dialogue between the visual and the verbal. Kruger and Holzer use text to convey powerful messages, challenging viewers to reconsider their perspectives and beliefs. Meanwhile, Daley Wilson’s scrawled personal writing system in Species Anosognosia is reminiscent of the use of text and repetition, and format seen in the works of Christopher Wool, Glenn Ligon, William Pope.L, Adam Pendleton, and, visually, even Cy Twombly. Like these language-based concepts, Daley Wilson’s work features large-scale text on canvas, creating a visual impact and gravity not only through size but also through the interplay of semiotic language and visual form. Wilson’s pieces, conceptually, are not far from Wool’s seminal work Apocalypse Now with respect to the use and arrangement of words to reflect an overwhelming denial and cognitive dissonance.

More broadly, the minimalist aesthetic and emphasis on process in Daley Wilson’s works can be traced back to, and reference, the origins of minimalism and postminimalism. Artists like Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt emphasized simplicity and materiality, stripping away extraneous elements to focus on the essence of the work. Daley Wilson’s pieces, with their clean lines and stark contrasts, embody this minimalist approach while also incorporating a conceptual depth that challenges the viewer to interpret beyond the first-glance obvious to engage with the underlying themes afforded by the intentionally ambiguous language that Daley Wilson authors in his pieces. (Daley Wilson never appropriates language; each word is his own; he only, from time to time, appropriates the underlying visual.)

Meanwhile, Daley Wilson’s use of text and language in relation to visual imagery can be traced back to several key movements and artists in art history. The serene backgrounds and horizons are reminiscent of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s seascapes, which capture the sublime beauty of nature. Sugimoto’s work emphasizes the timeless and transcendent quality of the natural world, a theme that Wilson also explores in his pieces as the predicates for his substantive textual content. The use of text as a primary element aligns Wilson with artists like Ed Ruscha, Barbara Kruger, and Jenny Holzer, as well as Mel Bochner and Kay Rosen, and, farther back in conceptual art history, John Baldessari, Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, and, in some pieces, Cy Twombly and his own personal writing system. In particular, Ruscha’s work often features text integrated with imagery, creating a dialogue between the visual and the verbal. Kruger and Holzer use text to convey powerful messages, challenging viewers to reconsider their perspectives and beliefs. At the end of the day, it seems that Daley Wilson is following substantively in the footsteps of Holzer and Kruger, using the visual footprints of Wool, Ruscha, and others as backdrop. It will be interesting to see what evolves from these approaches in the future.

In terms of art theory, it may be said that, with their ambiguities and juxtapositions, both textual and visual, Daley Wilson’s works require — perhaps even demand — that the viewer actively engage in interpretation, including in ways consistent with the theories of art interpretation developed by Rosalind Krauss and, to a related extent, Susan Sontag and others. Daley Wilson’s works do not tell you what to think or what to feel; they require active interpretation by the viewer, and the more curious and intellectually open the viewer, the better.

Substantively, Daley Wilson’s art goes beyond the mere semiotic to substantively speak to the broader human condition and our place not only on this planet, but also in history measured not in human years but by the almost-infinity of the lifespan of this Earth. Interpreted this way, Daley Wilsons’ work depicts and documents the reality of our destructive tendencies as humans, our ability to rationalize harm, and the long-term resilience of the planet. The six pieces in this essay collectively argue that while human actions cause significant damage, from which our children and our grandchildren will not survive, and from which other species will not survive, and in the end, when we are gone, the planet will recover and continue, without us, forgetting that there ever was a human kind. This perspective offered in Daley Wilson’s works may be interpreted as shifting the focus from anthropocentrism to a more balanced view, emphasizing the transient nature of human impact — we are only hurting ourselves and our children; the earth could care less and will easily move on. As such, these pieces may be seen to reference various existential and environmental philosophies. For example, they may be seen as referencing ideas from Heidegger’s concept of “being-in-the-world,” highlighting our interconnectedness with the environment. In addition, Daley Wilson’s critique of human behavior and its consequences may be seen as referring thinkers like Rachel Carson, and perhaps also the ethical imperatives in Aldo Leopold’s land ethic. More broadly, the existential angst and moral questioning present in these six works may be seen as reminiscent of Jean-Paul Sartre’s and Albert Camus’s explorations of human freedom, responsibility, and our willingness to abdicate both.

Should the reader need to have a common theme amongst these six pieces, the common theme running through them is, if one sentence must be put to them, an outsider’s critique and documentation, perhaps for future generations, perhaps for whatever is post-human, of this human species’ denial, apathy, and the long-term consequences of our current human being actions as just one of earth’s many, many species. Daley Wilson explores this (overly simplistic) theme through variations and juxtapositions in text and imagery, referencing the great text-based conceptual artists, and creating a new, unique, and cohesive narrative across his pieces, over the years, that challenge the viewer to interpret the works not as they first appear, but as recording the truths of our intentional moral failures that we try hard to lie about, escape from, and mythologize away.