The Removal of Land, 2015, is one of two works that Zheng first mounted on honeycomb aluminum panel, the second being Unfolding Landscape, 2015, which was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum for their permanent collection in 2016. Referencing the writings by the American earthworks artist Robert Smithson, both paintings are part of a body of work executed in 2015 and 2016 referencing concepts from geology. Zheng, at this time was interested in exploring the agency of his materials—ink, acrylic, water and paper—and the emergence of natural, fractal geometries from non-linear, dynamic material processes linked to chaos, entropy, flow and the natural complexity (order) that emerges from such flows. The resulting geometries resemble landscapes—riverbeds, coastlines, mountains and ravines—not because they are depictions of nature but rather because they are instantiations of the same material forces that shape our geological landscape. In this way, Zheng's works move painting, particularly "abstract" painting—out of the post-Socratic hierarchical ontology of form, concept, reality and representation into a material-and-energy, process-based ontology aligned with early Taoism, modern process philosophy, complexity and emergence theory, and new materialism.