Friedrich Adrian

ABOUT

The works belong to four interrelated bodies of work that follow a single figure through changing attitudes to life:

the Modern Hermit.

He is no escapist, but practices inner freedom. In each cycle that freedom faces a different test.

In the Epictetus Cycle it is Stoic equanimity: the distinction between what lies within our control and what does not.

The Siddhartha Cycle unfolds it as a path of self-realization: waiting, fasting, thinking, loving, being.

In The Modern Hermit, the retreat moves inward. The hermitage is no longer a place but a state of mind, sustaining a radical attention amid the noise. This figure is now mostly accompanied by a donkey, a silent, enduring companion.

With The Political Hermit, this inner freedom steps outward for the first time and carries a risk. At its center stands parrhesia. It originates in Athenian democracy as frank, fearless speech. The courage to speak truth openly and at personal risk. Across its historical transformations, the concept becomes, in Michel Foucault’s work, an ethical practice of truth-telling in which the speaker places themselves at stake. For Foucault, modern art becomes one of the privileged sites where this courage of truth continues to appear.

Across all the works, an arc thus extends from the inner space of human possibility to the public freedom of speech. In this they touch directly on that freedom of opinion, art and scholarship which forms the foundation of an open society and ask the price its defense demands.