Damien Hirst|The Dreams (H19)

'The Dreams' puts two of Hirst's longest-running motifs on one surface: the butterfly, which he has used since early in his career, and the spin painting, made by machine and chance.

Chaos held still

In a spin painting, paint is poured onto a turning surface, and the pattern is decided by the colours chosen and the motion of the machine. Hirst treats that fluid, unplanned movement as a metaphor for life and its constant change. The butterflies set against it seem stopped mid-flight, and he has called the result "chaos and control in perfect balance". The 40 source paintings use real butterflies and household gloss on canvases 91.4 cm square. They were offered by application from 27 March 2025 and shown at the HENI Gallery in Soho. Their titles follow the long form of Hirst's spin paintings, as in 'Beautiful Love in the Physical Painting (with Butterflies)'. The prints take short, two-word names instead.

Why dreams

Hirst has compared the prints to "capturing a star or a heartbeat": a record of the instant a painting was made, holding on to something joyful that would otherwise pass. The titles follow that idea in two directions. Some reach for the heavens, as in 'Angelic Seraph', 'Heavenly Elysia' and 'Aurora Dawn'. Others name brief or changing states, as in 'Transient Ephemera', 'Luna Chrysalis' and 'Gentle Zephyr'. Both suit the butterfly, which Hirst calls a "universal trigger" for love, beauty and the shortness of life, and which has stood for the soul since antiquity. Laid over a spin, it becomes the fixed point inside the blur.

Before and after

The series follows H18 - The Kaleidoscopes, released five months earlier, where cut wings were locked into symmetrical patterns and every edition was capped before sale. 'The Dreams' kept the butterfly but traded symmetry for the accident of the spin, and the orders placed during the drop decided how many of each print exist. The next numbered release, H20 - The Emotions in June 2026, left butterflies behind for nine prints after Hirst's paintings of jacaranda trees in bloom.