Image: BEERS London, London
BEERS London is presenting 'GLORY!', a new body of work by Andrew Salgado that marks a clear shift in the artist’s practice. For the first time, Salgado has moved away from figurative painting to make a series devoted exclusively to abstracted florals, described by the gallery as 62 small paintings of individual flowers. The exhibition is on view at 51 Little Britain, EC1A 7BH, London, until 15 August 2026.
The presentation frames the series as both exuberant and unsettled. According to the gallery text, the paintings occupy a space between celebration and mourning, expression and uncertainty, with colour and vitality set against ideas of frustration, release, restraint, abandon, beauty and decay. The word 'glory' is presented as a term with mixed associations, carrying meanings of brightness and majesty while also suggesting heaviness and social weightiness.
Salgado has long been identified with figurative painting, but the material provided for 'GLORY!' describes this project as a deliberate move in another direction. The artist’s recent exhibitions have often been accompanied by extensive writing and narrative frameworks, yet this body of work is said to turn away from that literary emphasis and toward a more immediate language built from gesture, sensation and the physical possibilities of paint. The works are made in oil and oil pastel on canvas.
The gallery also characterizes the series as a search for freedom. During the process of making the paintings, Salgado is said to have moved further from conventional flower imagery toward something closer to pure idea, comparing the approach to automatic writing or to a communion between concept, process and execution. The resulting images are described as dreamlike forms that hover between representational recognition and abstraction, with the flower serving less as subject matter than as a catalyst.
The exhibition text places the project within Salgado’s wider career as an artist born in Regina, Canada, in 1982, who graduated with an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art in 2009. It notes that he is regarded as one of the United Kingdom’s leading figurative painters and that he has exhibited in London, New York, Tokyo, Miami, Toronto, Cape Town, Sydney and elsewhere in Europe.
Among the solo exhibitions listed in the source material are 'Self-Portrait as a Stack of Books' at BEERS London in 2025, 'Tomorrow I'll Be Perfect' presented by BEERS London at Saatchi Gallery in London in 2023, 'A Never-Setting Sun' at BEERS London in 2022, and 'The Snake' at BEERS London in 2016. The current presentation includes works such as 'John Laroche Already Died' and 'Reincarnation', both dated 2026. Inquiries for 'GLORY!' are directed to info@beerslondon.com.
