Salman Toor’s sumptuous and insightful figurative paintings depict intimate, quotidian moments in the lives of imagined young, brown, queer men. 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-marginalised 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. By 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.
Toor (b. 1983, Lahore, Pakistan) lives and works in New York. His work is currently on view in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere, Venice, Italy, until 24 November 2024. Notable solo museum exhibitions of Toor's work include New Paintings and Drawings, M WOODS, Beijing, China (2023), accompanied by a forthcoming monograph published by Art Gallery of Western Australia; No Ordinary Love, a travelling US solo show organised by the Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore MD (2022–2024); and How Will I Know, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY (2020–2021). His work is in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY; The Morgan Library and Museum, New York NY; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis MN; High Museum of Art, Atlanta GA; Tate, London, England; Courtauld Gallery, London, England; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; and Pinault Collection, Paris, France among others.
