PATRON presents our second solo exhibition, Errantry, with Chicago-based artist Lindsay Adams. Adams’s new body of work extends an exploration into the query at the root of her practice; Where can I go to wander? As she moves across her canvases with an intuitive choreography, delicate gestures evidence errant modes of being, and moving through the world. Errantry marks her first exhibition since the unveiling of her mural commission at the Obama Presidential Center.

The exhibition takes its title from Édouard Glissant’s concept of errantry, articulated in his Poetics of Relation published in 1990, as a form of movement that resists the demand for a singular origin or stable identity. For Glissant, errantry is not aimlessness but a way of being, in relation to places, histories, people, and systems of knowledge that remain irreducible to one another. Adams’s paintings similarly resist a fixed point of arrival. Forms appear to gather and float across their surfaces, creating environments that feel at once intimate and expansive.

Glissant’s writing enters the exhibition directly through Untitled (Poetics of Relation, Glissant) #1 (2026) and Untitled (Poetics of Relation, Glissant) #2 (2026), large-scale works on paper with fervent gestures in ink, graphite, and charcoal on Yupo paper. These works establish a dialogue between her conceptual references and painterly language, where marks can function as fragments of something beyond the image.

The ascendent diptych, “Not being afraid of what I don’t know I unanxiously awaited the emergence” (2026), marks the threshold to Adams’s exhibition. Swirls of green and pink juxtaposed against cutting blues and yellow dripping down the surface beckon the viewer into imagined realities. Adams’s approach to the painted surface finds an important precedent in Helen Frankenthaler’s radical rethinking of the relationship between color, gesture, and ground, which allowed paint to behave as both image and material. Likewise, Adams approaches the canvas as a permeable field through aqueous washes of pigment and thick applications oil stick, culminating in compositions that float through undetermined spaces.

Continuing her engagement with concepts of opacity and refusal, Adams builds each painting on a foundational ground of black paint. With each layer she mitigates the light and spatial perception available to the viewer, negotiating what is knowable and what is withheld. In Rhizome (2026), the subtlest green hues seem to glow from within deep tones of inky blue, articulating a state of suspension.

Throughout Errantry Adams constructs paintings that refuse to settle into a singular reading. Her works move through abstraction as one might move through an unfamiliar landscape without a map, but with an attentiveness to what emerges along the way. Her paintings evidence a commitment to openness and emphasize wayfinding over arrival.

LINDSAY ADAMS (b. 1990, Washington, D.C.) lives and works in Chicago, IL. She received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL and a BA from University of Richmond, VA.

Solo exhibitions include: Errantry (2026), PATRON, Chicago, IL; Soil (2026), Sean Kelly, New York, NY; Ceremony (2026), Irene And Richard Frary Gallery, John Hopkins University, Washington, D.C.; All water has a perfect memory (2025), PATRON, Chicago, IL; Keep Your Wonder Moving (2025), Sean Kelly Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Two Things Can Be True, Lindsay Adams (2022), Eaton DC, Washington, D.C.; “…And Ain’t I A Woman.” (2022), Riverhill Art Residency, Upstate Art Weekend, Ulster Park, NY.

Group exhibitions include: Confluence (2026), The Peninsula Chicago, Chicago, IL; a person chosen, named, or honored…(2026), PATRON, Chicao, IL; Bounty (2026), Sargent’s Daughter, New York, NY; Mic Check (2025), Hamiltonian Artists, Washington, D.C.; Faktura / Tektonika (2025), Sean Kelly Gallery, New York NY; LIFE-a group show, curated by Arnold Kemp, Artists Space, New York, NY; Master Class, Secrist | Beach, Chicago, IL; It Never Entered My Mind (2024), Sean Kelly Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; In the Know, Show (2024), Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX; Arcadia and Elsewhere (2024), James Cohan Galley, New York, NY; How Do We Know the World? (2023), Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; A Color Story (2023), Cierra Britton Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Botany of Desire (2023), Swivel Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Grow in Haiti (2022), Alpha Arts Alliance, Brooklyn, NY; These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things (2022), Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; All Together (2022), Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C.; The Sanctuary (2022), West Chelsea Contemporary, New York, NY; Operation Varsity Blues (2021), Allouche Gallery, New York, NY; Truth About Me (2021), ArtLeadHER Foundation, Urban Zen, New York, NY.

Lindsay Adams was the recipient of Helen Frankathaler Award (2024), New Artist Society Scholar (2023), Judith Zielinski Scholar (2023), and Presidential Merit Scholar (2022). She was an artist-in-residence at the SAIC International Residency in Monte Castello di Vibio, Italy (2024), Sojourn for Harriet Jacobs in Edenton, NC (2024), and River Hill Art Residency in Ulster Park, NY (2022).

Select public collections include: Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; John Hopkins University, Washington, D.C.; Northwestern Law School, Chicago, IL; and The Obama Presidential Center, Chicago, IL.

Opening reception
Thursday, September 10, 2026
5:00 – 7:30 PM
PATRON
1612 W. Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL

Errantry is on view through October 31, 2026

Official Website

More events on this date

Tags: Chicago, Lindsay Adams, PATRON GALLERY