Living Histories: In Conversation with Salman Toor
The Frick Collection
Salman Toor
Man with Flag, 2022
Oil on linen
49 x 41 inches
(124.5 x 104.1 cm)
Salman Toor’s sumptuous and insightful figurative paintings depict intimate, quotidian moments in the lives of imagined young, brown, queer men ensconced in contemporary cosmopolitan culture. His work oscillates between heartening and harrowing, seductive and poignant, inviting and eerie.
In many of his paintings, he creates subtly disarming depictions of familiar domestic environments in which often-marginalized bodies flourish in safety and comfort. In other pieces, Toor creates allegorical spaces of waiting, anticipation, and apprehension; border crossings into a world that may or may not be welcoming. Central to his work are the anxieties and the comedies of identity. In creating his figures, he employs and destabilizes specific tropes in order to reflect on the way difference is perceived by the self and by others. As Whitney curators Christopher Lew and Ambika Trasi have noted, Toor’s project is one that examines “vulnerability within contemporary public and private life and the notion of community in the context of queer, diasporic identity.” Furthermore, in depicting the mundane and the memorable moments of his characters’ lives, Toor reveals a deeply relatable existence, ultimately creating an opportunity for empathy through the language of painting.
Salman Toor
Thanksgiving, 2022
Oil on canvas
69 x 50 inches
(175.3 x 127 cm)
Toor was born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1983 and currently lives and works in New York. He studied painting and drawing at Ohio Wesleyan University and received his MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. His work is currently on view in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, through November 24, 2024. Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love, a solo exhibition of the artist’s work organized by and originally presented at the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD in 2022, and accompanied by a catalogue, later traveled to the Tampa Museum of Art, the Honolulu Museum of Art, and the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA (2023-2024). A major solo presentation of Toor’s work was also presented at M WOODS in Beijing in 2023; in association with the project, the Art Gallery of Western Australia produced a publication (Fall 2024).
Other solo exhibitions include Salman Toor: How Will I Know, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2020-2021) and The Pleasure Pavilion: A Series of installations | Salman Toor at Luhring Augustine Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY (2021). Toor’s work was also included in Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters at Frick Madison, New York, NY and an image of his painting Music Room (2021) was featured on the Hayward Gallery Billboard, London in 2022. Toor’s work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions and projects, including most recently Any Distance Between Us, RISD Museum, Providence, RI; and I will wear you in my heart of heart, FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; Relations: Diaspora and Painting, Phi Foundation for Contemporary Art, Montréal, Canada; and Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL. Toor is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, and his work is in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; Wake Forest University Art Collection, Winston-Salem, NC; Tate, London, UK; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Pinault Collection, Paris, France; and M WOODS, Beijing, China, among others.
Living Histories: In Conversation with Salman Toor
The Frick Collection
Salman Toor's Emerald Green
From the Art21 "New York Close Up" series
Salman Toor in conversation with Asma Naeem and Evan Moffitt
November 17, 2022
Luhring Augustine Tribeca
The Pleasure Pavilion: A series of installations
featuring Salman Toor
March 4–April 10, 2021
Luhring Augustine Bushwick
For more information, please contact Donald Johnson Montenegro at donald@luhringaugustine.com.
