A new body of work by British artist Gavin Turk centers on a singular motif: a door, left partially open. Doors are an evocative symbol and motif not only in visual art but literature, psychology, and beyond, and for Turk, they offer a potent starting point for considerations around time, space, and perspective—both physical and philosophical.
Turk burst onto the art scene in the early 1990s as one of the Young British Artists (or YBAs), and his practice over the subsequent decades has come to be recognized for its diverse range of mediums and influences—from pop culture to art history—and his unapologetic approach to challenging (even shocking) subject matter. The use of trompe l’oeil has also appeared regularly in his work, of which his present doorway works are the latest installment.
Turk’s series of door paintings are set to go on view in London at Ben Brown Fine Arts in “The Escapologist,” the artist’s sixth solo with the gallery and on view March 11–May 22, 2026. Ahead of the show’s opening, we reached out to the artist to learn more about what’s in store, and what the conceptual and inspirational underpinnings of this body of work are.
Can you tell us a bit about the theme of the show and the works that will be going on view?
The title of the show, “The Escapologist,” suggests a missing figure, a figurative gap, someone who has either left or is about to appear. That implied absence matters. We are used to seeing portraits of people, the canvas is a portrait canvas, the work isn’t about what lies beyond the door, but about the viewers’ urge to step toward the unknown, even when we can’t be sure what we’re moving into.
This show explores the psychological and symbolic charge of the threshold, the suspended moment between one state and another. The recurring image of the door set ajar becomes a paradox: it is at once an obstruction and an invitation, holding us in a space of anticipation.
As an artist, I have had a lifelong interest in how belief is constructed through images, of course these perspectives and ideas have evolved over time as my world view and indeed our shared world view has shifted.
The door operates as a quiet mechanism for that uncertainty. The image invites us to consider whether escape is truly possible, or whether it is something onto which we project a fiction that allows us to imagine another future.
The show consists of a series of paintings of doors in door frames, and each door is half open with the painting of the door frame carrying on to the edge of the canvas, so they have an illusionistic, sculptural quality. These trompe-l’oeil doors are hung low on the wall, so they appear semi-realistic. Beyond each door a gradient background alludes to different kinds of space—sometimes outside, sometimes inside—a rather ambiguous scene.
