Salman Toor, The Joke, 2024, oil on panel
At Luhring Augustine’s Chelsea and Tribeca locations, viewers are invited to take in new paintings, etchings, and works on paper by Salman Toor which inflict pointed stares, a contemporary tableau of mischief and gastronomic ambiance (that’s The Joke), and a series of narrative arcs which illustrate “vulnerability within contemporary public and private life and the notion of community in the context of queer, diasporic identity,” as show notes read. The exhibition shimmers between the theatrical and the tender, employing visual wit and moments of painterly suspense to navigate desire, distance, and the performance of belonging. The result is both intimate and expansive, gesturing toward solidarity while maintaining a sense of artful, if uneasy, play. Toor’s canvases – frequently cast in a viridescent haze – toggle between the heartening and the harrowing, finding tension and tenderness in scenes of queer social life. His characters lounge in private interiors, wilt in bureaucratic holding zones, or collapse into his now-recognizable “fag puddles” – opulent heaps of matter which combine limbs, objects, and lived experience.
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