In the foreground, a female figure lies on a bed, her elongated limbs morph with the white sheet covering her, trailing down the end of the bed like a curvaceous carved, marble statue; behind rises a cathedral-like structure of soft colours and many arches, and arch-like shapes, intertwining and reaching, opening to reveal the dark, night sky.

It first appears that there is one figure lying on the bed with her blonde hair hanging down behind, but on closer inspection, a darker head rests behind her blond head and a body lies next to her beneath the sheet, their legs intertwined. The sheet which covers them has a scalloped edge; it appears shell-like and substantial, as if it could take on a life of its own. In the dreamworld into which the couple enter it becomes their unified dream itself and lifts, spectre-like into the air, like the floating shell-like, cloud-like, night-gown that floats above the planets in Orlick’s paintings Dream and Expectations.

Orlik’s painting compliments de Chirico’s (1888-1978) interest in classical architecture, encompassing his depiction of arcades and arches. It references de Chirico’s reclining The Soothsayer’s Recompense (1913, Philadelphia Museum of Art) and Ariadne (1913, Metropolitan Museum of Art) painted during his famed metaphysical period. De Chirico’s painting incorporates Ariadne abandoned by Theseus after he has slain the Minotaur in Daedalus’s labyrinth. Orlik paints his own suggested labyrinth of doorways, and blank doorways, which seem to lead to endless silent rooms, to everywhere and nowhere. He creates a labyrinthine complexity of shapes, as the dreamworld becomes a labyrinth of thoughts, the different neurons in the mind leading and interweaving strange and wonderful images; an internal psychological landscape becomes a concrete physical space. Orlik’s statue-couple, although white-coloured like a Greek statue, seem like living, sleeping, people, curled on a bed, their white covering a sheet or a shroud.