MARIA KREYN : DREAM LOGIC
Ministry of Nomads Art Foundation is pleased to announce Maria Kreyn: Dream Logic, a solo exhibition of new works by the artist, set within the historic Swiss Church in Covent Garden, presented during Frieze week 2026.
Dream Logic brings together Maria Kreyn’s storm paintings in the setting of the Swiss Church, Covent Garden. The works depict luminous vortexes of cloud, weather and light, cut through by planes of prismatic geometry. Kreyn takes up the Romantic tradition’s fascination with the sublime power of nature, but her storms are less about the weather itself than about what lies beyond it: each painting acts as a portal into a philosophical dreamscape where the vastness of the cosmos is bound up with intimate human emotion.
Her technique sets two very different modes against each other. On one side is the physical energy of Turner and the careful, detailed rendering of Vernet; on the other, mathematical abstraction and visualisations of multidimensional space. Turbulent skies and shifting fields of light are crossed by ovoid, parabolic and linear forms that behave like lenses, bending the visual field and hinting at an underlying order just beyond the edge of perception.
The title points to the way thought works outside waking consciousness. In dreams, the ordinary rules of cause, sequence and physical space are suspended: separate moments coexist, impossible landscapes can be travelled through, and understanding arrives from nowhere in particular. Kreyn situates herself within a line of artists, from Leonora Carrington and Dorothea Tanning to David Lynch and Andrei Tarkovsky, who used dreams to reach alternative structures of space, time and meaning rather than simple fantasy. Dream logic, in this sense, is not disorder but a different kind of coherence, driven by association, intuition and bodily knowledge.
The paintings sit in this threshold territory. They blur the line between inner and outer worlds, so that landscape reads as both physical terrain and psychological space. Weather becomes the porous border between conscious and unconscious experience, and atmosphere becomes a way of sensing deep time. The geometric shapes work like prisms or fragments of some unknown architecture, briefly reorganising the visible world and revealing an order that is usually hidden. Set against the volatility of the painted skies, they create a charged tension between the measurable and the unknowable, the material and the metaphysical.
The building is an active part of the exhibition rather than a backdrop. Built in 1855 and restored by the Basel architects Christ & Gantenbein, the Swiss Church pairs classical proportions with a restrained Swiss minimalism. A folded mirrored screen scatters light and reflections across the nave, adding an almost futuristic sense of spatial disruption to the austere Victorian interior. Kreyn has arranged the works along the church’s spatial and symbolic axes, responding directly to these conditions.
The focal point is The Alchemist’s Coil, installed at the altar in place of a traditional altarpiece. It shows a serpentine staircase, part DNA helix and part ascending path, winding up through layers of golden landscape. The painting draws on assembly theory, which links the origins of life to a mathematical theory of complexity and suggests that matter carries a memory of how it came to be. In this position, it shifts the altar’s meaning away from specific doctrine and towards reverence for the endless spiral of creation, dissolution and renewal.
The result is an immersive meditation on time, inner life and cosmic scale, in which the gathered history of a sacred space becomes part of the experience of the work.
The exhibition centers on Kreyn’s storm paintings, presenting luminous vortexes in which planes of prismatic geometry intersect with painterly, atmospheric space. Reprising the Romantic tradition, which celebrates the sublime power of nature, Kreyn’s storms are portals into philosophic dreamscapes in which immense cosmic scales are entangled with intimate human emotion. Kreyn constructs environments in which the haptic intensity of J.M.W. Turner and the meticulous rendering of Vernet are brought in contact with mathematical abstraction and visualizations of multidimensional space. Cloud systems, turbulent skies, and shifting fields of light are traversed by ovoid, parabolic and linear forms that lens the visual field, suggesting traces of an underlying order beyond the limits of perception.
The title Dream Logic refers to the structures of thought that emerge beyond waking consciousness. Dreams suspend the familiar coordinates of causality, chronology and physical space: disparate moments coexist, impossible landscapes become navigable, and insight emerges without identifiable source. In this, Kreyn follows a lineage extending from Leonora Carrington and Dorothea Tanning to David Lynch and Andrei Tarkovsky—artists for whom dream states offered access not simply to fantasy, but to alternate structures of space, time and meaning. Rather than chaos, the phrase proposes another kind of coherence: one governed by association, intuition and embodied knowledge.
Kreyn’s paintings inhabit this liminal territory. Collapsing distinctions between interior and exterior worlds, they consider the landscape as both physical and psychic terrain. Weather becomes a threshold—the porous boundary between conscious and unconscious experience—and atmosphere becomes a conduit for sensing deep time. The geometries operate as prisms, lenses or fragments of an unknown architecture through which the visible world is momentarily reorganized, offering glimpses of an order otherwise concealed. Set against the volatility of the painted atmosphere, they produce a tension between the measurable and the unknowable, the material and the metaphysical.
At the Swiss Church, Dream Logic unfolds within an architectural setting that itself negotiates between historical and contemporary modes. Built in 1855 and later restored by Basel-based architects Christ & Gantenbein, the church pairs its classical proportions with a distinctly Swiss minimalism. A folded mirrored screen fractures light and reflections across the nave, introducing an almost futuristic element of spatial discontinuity into the otherwise austere nineteenth-century interior. Kreyn’s installation responds directly to these conditions, organizing the works along the church’s spatial and symbolic axes rather than treating the building as a neutral container.
At the altar, The Alchemist’s Coil acts as the exhibition’s focal point. A serpentine staircase, part DNA helix, part ascending path, winds upward through layers of a golden landscape. In keeping with Kreyn’s frequent use of visual metaphors for scientific ideas, the work references assembly theory, which joins investigations into the origins of life with a mathematical theory of complexity, positing that matter itself carries a memory of how it came to be. Positioned in place of a traditional altarpiece, the painting shifts the altar’s focus from specific doctrine to a reverence for the spiraling motion of creation, dissolution, and regeneration.
Dream Logic continues Kreyn’s evolving dialogue with sacred architectural spaces. Following her solo presentations Chronos at St. George’s Anglican Church during the 60th Venice Biennale (2024), and Hyperobject at the Fitzrovia Chapel (2025), Dream Logic places Kreyn’s surreal visions in dialogue with the elegant, minimal matrix of the Swiss Church, Covent Garden. Across these projects, sacred architecture functions not simply as a backdrop but as an active element in the work’s encounter with scale, temporality, ritual and transcendence.
Committed to supporting projects that move beyond the conventional gallery model, M.O.N regularly stages exhibitions within sacred and historic spaces, attentive to the way ritual, memory and collective experience accumulate within architecture to produce egregore: a presence formed through repeated acts of gathering, attention and belief. Dream Logic welcomes viewers into an immersive meditation on the materiality of time and the dreamlike terrain where inner life opens onto collective experience and cosmic scale.
Artist Biography
Maria Kreyn (b. 1987) is an American artist whose emotionally charged works merge figuration, geometry, and elemental atmospherics. She studied mathematics and philosophy at The University of Chicago and is self-taught in painting. Her practice moves between paintings and large-scale, site-responsive projects, frequently engaging sacred architecture as a framework for exploring the possibility of reverence beyond religion.
Kreyn’s work has frequently been presented in dialogue with significant historical works. Her 2026 exhibition Continuum at Voena Gallery in Milan placed her paintings alongside J. M. W. Turner, while Weinstein Gallery presented Kreyn at Art Basel Miami as the sole living artist among a group of major Surrealist figures, including Frida Kahlo, Leonor Fini, and Leonora Carrington.
In 2021, Kreyn completed The Shakespeare Cycle, a group of eight monumental paintings commissioned by Andrew Lloyd Webber for London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane, where the works remain on permanent public display. In 2024, she presented Chronos, a solo exhibition at St. George’s Anglican Church during the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, followed in 2025 by Hyperobject, a solo presentation of storm paintings at The Fitzrovia Chapel during Frieze London.
Maria Kreyn lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
