Image: Beers London
BEERS London is presenting 'Glory!', a new body of work by Andrew Salgado that marks a clear shift in his practice. According to the gallery, the exhibition is the first time Salgado has moved away from figurative painting to develop a series devoted entirely to abstracted florals. The show is in its final week and closes on Saturday 15 August 2026 at 51 Little Britain, EC1A 7BH, London.
The exhibition frames these paintings as works built on contradiction. BEERS describes the series as at once funereal and joyous, occupying a space between celebration and mourning, expression and uncertainty. The works are said to be rich in colour and vitality, while also holding together tensions such as frustration and release, restraint and abandon, and beauty and decay. The gallery’s announcement links the title 'Glory!' to that double register, describing the word as promising yet unsettling, and as carrying meanings associated with majesty, lightness, heaviness and social weight.
Salgado’s new direction is also presented as a deliberate break from the narrative frameworks that have accompanied recent exhibitions. The gallery says the artist’s work has, in recent years, been paired with extensive writing and literary structures, but that 'Glory!' turns in the opposite direction, favouring gesture, sensation and the immediate possibilities of paint. The statement describes the series as a response to the turmoil of recent years and as a reaction to the artist’s own tendency toward narrative.
Within that shift, the flower becomes less a literal subject than a starting point. BEERS says Salgado has moved beyond conventional flower painting toward something closer to pure idea, comparing the process to automatic writing or a communion between concept, process and execution. The paintings are described as dreamlike expressions that hover between recognisable form and abstraction. The gallery’s text stresses that the flowers function as catalysts for the artist’s increasingly abstract approach rather than as straightforward depictions of botanical subjects.
The works on view are listed as a series of individual flowers, each measuring 25 x 20 cm and made with oil and oil pastel on canvas. An installation image is credited to Damian Griffiths. The gallery has also quoted John Banville’s 'Nightspawn' in connection with the presentation, though the source material does not identify this as part of the exhibition title or as a curatorial statement.
Andrew Salgado, born in 1982 in Regina, Canada, graduated with an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art in 2009. BEERS describes him as one of the United Kingdom’s leading figurative painters and notes that he has exhibited widely in London, New York, Tokyo, Miami, Toronto, Cape Town, Sydney and elsewhere in Europe. The gallery also lists several previous solo exhibitions, including 'Self-Portrait as a Stack of Books' at BEERS London in 2025, 'Tomorrow I'll Be Perfect' at Saatchi Gallery in London in 2023, and 'A Never-Setting Sun' at BEERS London in 2022.
