Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, July 8, 2022: Salman Toor, a Pakistan-born American emerging artist (#1616)

Friday, July 8, 2022

Artist of the Day, July 8, 2022: Salman Toor, a Pakistan-born American emerging artist (#1616)

Salman Toor (1983) is a Pakistani-born American painter. His works depict the imagined lives of young, Queer men of South Asian-birth, displayed in close range in either South Asia and New York City fantasized settings.[1] Toor lives and works in New York City.

Born and partially raised in Lahore, Salman Toor's family moved to suburban Ohio when he was 14. He studied Painting and Drawing at Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, graduating with a BFA in 2006 before completing an MFA in Painting at New York's Pratt Institute in 2009. Salman Toor's paintings vary in style from detailed works reminiscent of 19th-century history painting to expressive, semi-abstract figures.

Salman Toor's main body of work is comprised of lush, figurative interior scenes, and is focused on imagined young queer brown men living in New York or the cities of South Asia. In a semi-autobiographical mode, without overtly portraying himself or friends and family, Toor presents tableaus of public and private spaces that offer an intimate window into intersections of queer and diasporic identities.

Strong emotions are conveyed through the faces of the figures present in Salman Toor's paintings, in environments richly populated with the ephemera of modern life, including smartphones, chargers, food, and drink. As the artist explained in an interview with them, he is interested in scenes that define 'relationships and moments that make the experience of being an immigrant, a painter, and a queer person of color in an urban setting.'

Exploring a sense of community within these identities, Salman Toor presents intimate scenes like After Party (2018), of dancing and having fun with friends. Works like Salman Toor's Bar Boy (2019), conversely, present more passive moments, in which figures stand disconnected from their surroundings, implying a sense of alienation or nostalgic reflection.

Enhancing his scenes with fantastical and dramatic elements, Salman Toor renders them with swirling lines and palettes of muted browns and greens, disrupted with pinks and yellows that pop out in the overall composition. As evidenced by Salman Toor's Whitney Museum solo show in 2020, and appearances at the Lahore Biennale in Pakistan and the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, the artist is an emerging presence on the New York and international art scene.
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