Friedrich Adrian

Parrhesia

Political Hermit Cycle

Charcoal and oil on linen

130 x 100 cm

Athens, Hydra, Berlin

2026

A Doric temple, cut off at the side, its architrave broken away to the left and with it the words WHOEVER SPEAKS IT. They invoke a maxim attributed to Maimonides: "Hear the truth, whoever speaks it." It is not the speaker who decides the weight of a sentence, but its truth alone.

Between the columns hang the sacrificial lambs. The price of the free word. Parrhesia, truth-telling under threat, is dangerous. In front, the donkey. It does not speak, it bears. It looks directly at the viewer.

Below in the valley, the agora. The place of assembly, to which the free word is addressed.

Where is the agora today?

Ohne Tun.

Non-Doing.

Political Hermit Cycle

Charcoal and oil on linen

50 × 40 cm

Sesto Calende

2026

A flooded station hall on the Domodossola–Milan line. The route is suspended, the notice hangs on the wall and below someone has scrawled MERDE. The luggage stays where it was put down. But at its base the water has already begun to take it, the cases loosening into the flood. Bottom right, in the pink band, a swimmer.

Zhuangzi tells of a swimmer at the Lüliang falls, in water no creature survives. Asked for his method, he says he has none. He goes down with the swirl and comes up with the surge and does not think of himself in the water.

So she flows with what is there, which is water, and arrives.

Stay non-doing, and nothing remains undone.