Salman Toor
Luhring Augustine is pleased to announce In a Free State, a group exhibition curated by artists Salman Toor and Doron Langberg. Opening at our Tribeca gallery on June 26, and on view through July 31, this exhibition brings together artworks by twenty-two artists working across media.
Manal Abu-Shaheen, Komail Aijazuddin, Osama Al Rayyan, Shadi Al-Atallah, Kamrooz Aram, Felipe Baeza, Huma Bhabha, Gaby Collins-Fernandez, Abed Elmajid Shalabi, Florencia Escudero, Mark Thomas Gibson, Hugh Hayden, Dana Kavelina, Cindy Ji Hye Kim, Paul Latislaw, Carlos Motta, Jordan Nassar, Ellery Neon, Oren Pinhassi, Prem Sahib, Michael Stamm, and Veronika Szkudlarek.
For this exhibition, we drew from our circle of close friends, connected with artists we have long admired, and reached out to younger voices that we are excited about. We looked for work that somehow gave us insight into this fraught moment, where the structures of trust—from the interpersonal to the political—have collapsed. Although the works in the exhibition were not all created in response to or during this precarious moment, each of them, and the practices that surround them, felt to us as a viable way to visualize and contend with a chaotic and alienating time.
The breadth of this presentation channels the lyricism and poetry of painting, as well as a labyrinth of objects, curious textures, and moving images. Dark deities and monolithic figures coexist with urgent calls to action in a post-apocalyptic circuitry of politics and art. Earthy materials masquerade as protective metallic shells and a search for power and sensuality ends in bodies pushed beyond the limit. The stakes for each artist in the show are different—some work in close proximity to war, some have families living in regions marked by upheaval and displacement, some are citizens in opposition to their governments, and some engage with the high costs of coping in a turbulent society—yet they all made us understand some aspect about the impossibility of this time. Running through the show are threads of absurd humor and morbid imagery, but inside these critical views of our human condition are sensorial wishes for things to be different, and a belief in our ability to imagine through making.
– Salman Toor and Doron Langberg