Sean Kelly, Los Angeles is delighted to announce Keep Your Wonder Moving, the West Coast debut of Chicago-based artist Lindsay Adams and her inaugural solo exhibition with the gallery. Titled after a note written by poet Patricia Spears Jones to philosopher Audre Lorde, the exhibition, presented on the third floor, consists of eleven abstract paintings. Keep Your Wonder Moving emphasizes the artist’s longstanding interest in world-building – Adams’ exploration of abstraction as a conduit for expanding the imagination while embedding deeply personal narratives.
Adams’ work interrogates the boundaries of abstraction and representation, seamlessly weaving together the materiality of paint with the intangibility of memory and cultural identity.
Her layered approach—where pigments are built up, washed away, or otherwise manipulated—imbues each canvas with a sense of flux, reflecting her assertion that painting is as much alchemical as it is artistic. Her process leaves behind not only a complex surface, but also an ambiguity that invites sustained contemplation.
"I’m very interested in moving and exploring the paint because there is a level of freedom, I’ve been thinking a lot of about liberation and engaging in dialogue in that way and using the canvas as a way to negotiate." - Lindsay Adams
Keep Your Wonder Moving pivots from her earlier figurative depictions of nature and Black subjects to a complex abstract vernacular. As Adams describes, this transition emerged as “an inevitable shift toward expressing a conceptual story, allowing myself latitude in my storytelling and cultural reflection.”
The works on view highlight her interest in constructing imagined ecologies, spaces in which rhythmic gestures and dynamic hues engage in a continuous dialogue.
For instance, in Rhythm With Blues, electric yellow and lavender forms bloom against an inky blue background, evoking a field of abstracted flowers that resist traditional representational constraints.
Adams challenges the viewer to question the delineations of form to embrace the unknown.
"As I engage in more difficult concepts like the nuances and complexities of the black experience, and a more abstract view of sociology and politics, my work in many ways has begun to mimic visually how I am facilitating dual-positioning where I am making a very clear formal position and political stance." - Lindsay Adams
Thematically, Adams situates her practice at the intersection of resilience, freedom, and the quotidian realities of Black womanhood. Her work transforms the canvas into an aspirational site—one that allows for intimate encounters with self-discovery and resistance against societal constraints.
This ethos resonates with her political and cultural identity, as her paintings assert their presence within a broader discourse of artistic and social transformation. The exhibition thus positions painting as both a reflective and generative act, with Adams’ compositions acting as sites where meaning is not prescribed but rather discovered.
"I am clearly a painter in the most romantic way in terms of my love for painting and in my love for pursuing the materials." - Lindsay Adams
Lindsay Adams is currently finalizing her MFA in Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received a BA in both International Studies and Spanish from The University of Richmond. She has already garnered critical recognition, including the prestigious Helen Frankenthaler Award in 2024 and the New Artist Society Merit Award in 2023. Her work has been exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C., and is included in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art and Northwestern Law School.
For additional information on the exhibition, please visit skny.com
For press inquiries, please email Adair Lentini at Adair@skny.com
For all other inquiries, please email Thomas Kelly at Thomas@seankellyla.com
Installation view of Lindsay Adams: Keep Your Wonder Moving at Sean Kelly, Los Angeles, January 18 – March 8, 2025, Photography: Brica Wilcox, Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles
Installation view of Lindsay Adams: Keep Your Wonder Moving at Sean Kelly, Los Angeles, January 18 – March 8, 2025, Photography: Brica Wilcox, Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles
Installation view of Lindsay Adams: Keep Your Wonder Moving at Sean Kelly, Los Angeles, January 18 – March 8, 2025, Photography: Brica Wilcox, Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles
Installation view of Lindsay Adams: Keep Your Wonder Moving at Sean Kelly, Los Angeles, January 18 – March 8, 2025, Photography: Brica Wilcox, Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles
Installation view of Lindsay Adams: Keep Your Wonder Moving at Sean Kelly, Los Angeles, January 18 – March 8, 2025, Photography: Brica Wilcox, Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles
Installation view of Lindsay Adams: Keep Your Wonder Moving at Sean Kelly, Los Angeles, January 18 – March 8, 2025, Photography: Brica Wilcox, Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles
Installation view of Lindsay Adams: Keep Your Wonder Moving at Sean Kelly, Los Angeles, January 18 – March 8, 2025, Photography: Brica Wilcox, Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles
Installation view of Lindsay Adams: Keep Your Wonder Moving at Sean Kelly, Los Angeles, January 18 – March 8, 2025, Photography: Brica Wilcox, Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles
Lindsay Adams
Float on, 2024
oil on canvas
40 inches (101.6 cm) diameter
signed by artist, verso
LAd-3
Lindsay Adams
Quietly Drifting, 2024
oil on canvas
60 x 60 x 1 3/4 inches (152.4 x 152.4 x 4.4 cm)
signed by artist, verso
LAd-4
Lindsay Adams
A bit of glimmer on dark days, 2024
oil on canvas
60 x 60 x 1 3/4 inches (152.4 x 152.4 x 4.4 cm)
signed by artist, verso
LAd-5
Lindsay Adams
Fire This Time, 2024
diptych oil on canvas
each canvas: 50 x 40 x 1 3/4 inches (127 x 101.6 x 4.4 cm)
overall: 50 x 80 x 1 3/4 inches (127 x 203.2 x 4.4 cm)
signed by artist, verso
LAd-8.AB
Lindsay Adams
I can hear the echoes of my dreams, 2024
diptych oil on canvas
canvas A: 40 x 30 x 1 1/2 inches (101.6 x 76.2 x 3.8 cm)
canvas B: 36 x 36 x 1 1/2 inches (91.4 x 91.4 x 3.8 cm)
overall: 40 x 66 x 1 1/2 inches (101.6 x 167.6 x 3.8 cm)
signed by artist, verso
LAd-9.AB
Lindsay Adams
Resonance, 2024
oil on canvas
24 x 24 x 1 3/4 inches (61 x 61 x 4.4 cm)
signed by artist, verso
LAd-12
