Some Minimalism and a Dream
Dao and Zen—or Dao and Chinese Chan (禅) [1]—returned to the foreground of my thinking during a pause in the autumn of 2025. Along with them came a wish to reduce the work further, and a dream. The dream comes at the end.
The political and geopolitical developments of the preceding months had left me distracted. A lingering flu-like infection forced me to rest. Wrapped up and sweating, I drifted into the vivid dreams that sometimes come with illness.
After several long articles, I wanted to leave these pictures with relatively little commentary. There should be room to enjoy them—or detest them—without too much explanation from me.
Dream Sequences
After some particularly intense dreams, I got up from time to time and tried to capture their moods. I was not painting the events of a dream. I wanted to see how little was needed to suggest its atmosphere. My interest in Daoism and Zen remained part of that approach. Earlier ways of working with dreams appear in Dreamtellers.
In the first works, I wasn’t concerned with a figurative representation, but rather with an attempt to convey the emotional state of a nightmare, for example. That indefinite tension of fear, being captivated, or fascinated, all at the same time.
Minimalism
After a few attempts, I felt the urge, as I so often do, to let go, to leave out everything superfluous, to concentrate on the essence, and to condense it.
One work may help explain what I mean by the presence of Dao and Zen in these paintings:
On the left, the red and orange marks feel forceful and insistent. I associate them with yang. The quieter green forms at the upper right suggest yin to me. These associations belong to my reading of this composition; I am not using yin and yang as fixed labels for good and evil.
Between them, the pale, yellow and blue marks suggest land and water to me. I think of our material world, held between forces that never settle into a permanent balance. The relationship is present in the whole composition and in the smaller groups of marks.
The connection with Zen is different: I am interested in how a small, unobtrusive event can hold the attention, and how the open ground changes the marks placed within it. This is how the philosophy enters my working process, rather than a claim that an abstract picture illustrates a doctrine.
The imbalance also carries a political association for me. I see aggression receiving far more space than restraint or care. The circulation of falsehoods, including those amplified through AI, deepens that unease. I want the quieter parts of a painting to have weight too. That is enough philosophy for today.
Dream
The photographs accompanying the dream come from earlier journeys to several countries. They are separate travel images, not photographs of the events described in the dream.
I’m with Z., on our way to an online broker’s office, but a nagging confusion takes hold. I can’t find it, despite a phantom memory of having been here countless times. We enter a mall, and it’s immediately clear we’re in the wrong place. This should be an ordinary building. Z. decides to go home. I keep searching the area, which is not just unfamiliar but utterly alien. It has morphed into a labyrinthine marketplace, much like the medina in Fes, a sensory assault of unknown sounds and the bewitching scent of spices.
The sights are breathtaking. I raise my phone to photograph them, but horror jolts through me when I see the display—it’s infected with a virus, a parasitic game icon squatting on the screen. I try to delete it without activating it. Suddenly, Z. is back, claiming she can defeat the virus, but her efforts are as futile as mine.
I walk on alone, shaken by the strangeness of it all, yet captivated by a beauty I can’t capture and promise myself I’ll return. I need to figure out where I am. The 3rd district? With every corner I turn, my desire to escape this labyrinth intensifies, a maze whose fascinating scenes pull me deeper. Small women in hijabs pass me like ghosts. I buy unusual groceries, planning to cook a special meal at home, a small anchor to reality. After the next corner, a bizarre tableau: strange, gray creatures, like bloated cats or rats or perhaps beavers, huddle in a gray, undefined space. Another animal appears from nowhere and sinks a sharp tooth deep into my thumb. I ask a passerby how to get to the city center.
A little further on, I discover a wider street—perhaps Landstraße Hauptstraße?—and head toward it. But when I reach it, I realize it’s wrong, another dead end in this distorted blueprint of my own city. I retreat into an alley and find myself in a kind of Chinatown made of dark wood and ornate carvings.
A woman’s table is overturned; tiny, exquisite scent bottles are scattered on the ground. I try to steal one, but she sees me, and her gaze locks on mine, sharp and knowing. Again, I ask someone for the way to the center. Finally, an answer: the subway. The man confirms it, and an entrance materializes before me. I try to memorize the station’s name, wanting to bring Z. back to prove this place exists. But there are no normal street signs, only square, blue plaques with an alien script.
I see another incredible scene and instinctively raise my phone to photograph it. The virus icon is there, waiting. It begins to bloom, creeping across the screen, growing into a pulsating, malignant entity that threatens to shatter the device in my hand.
Someone I ask for directions suggests taking a taxi. And there they are—two taxi stands. I walk toward the first, but as I approach, the car pulls away smoothly, its two occupants giving me a strange, knowing look. The same thing happens with the next taxi, and the next. I cross the intersection to the other stand. It happens again. Every taxi leaves without me.
A thought begins to form, hardening from a fleeting fear into certainty: I’m out of control. Or rather, I’m already there. How far have I fallen? Do I want to live like this? How could I even take my own life? Then, a glimmer of hope: What if this is all just a dream? A way out? But the thought feels weak, improbable. A wave of absolute despair washes over me.
I half-awaken into a twilight state, a brief moment of relief in the unreality of it all before sleep pulls me back under. I’m now looking for a phone store to buy a new one. The memory blurs and fades. I’m at home, opening my PC. The first thing I see is the virus icon. It blossoms and multiplies into an unstoppable swarm, flooding the screen. I can’t click away without risking everything. I call V., who tries to access my computer from his office to fix it, but he can’t; I’ve severed the remote link. He tells me to send photos of the screen, but that fails, too.
I wake up because my cleaning lady is calling to say she’s at the garage door.
Footnotes
[1] Chan is a Chinese tradition of Mahayana Buddhism from which Japanese Zen developed. Meditation and direct insight are central, alongside a substantial tradition of texts, teaching and practice. Daoism and Chan have a history of interaction, but they are not interchangeable. For an introduction to Zen’s practice and philosophy, see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Related articles
Daoist Talks (III): The Cosmos in One Dot · Dreamtellers · Day Dream Job
Explore Art & Writing
Art Portfolio → Featured Artworks → Arts & Philosophy Journal → All Articles
Explore Asian Art Essays for writing on Chinese painting, calligraphy, aesthetics and art history.
Available Artworks
Original works are available on FriedrichZettl.com and Saatchi Art
Leave a Reply