SALMAN TOOR
Born 1983 in Lahore, Pakistan.
Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Toor's works range from meticulously executed nineteenth-century-style history painting to loosely painted and abstracted figuration employing design elements and visual language from Eastern and Western pop culture. As observed by Whitney curators Christopher Lew and Ambika Trasi, "Toor's paintings consider vulnerability within contemporary public and private life and the notion of community in the context of queer, diasporic identity."
Salman Toor, Time After Time, 2018, Oil on panel, 16 x 12 in
Salman Toor, Man with Tote Bag and Laptop, 2018, Oil on panel, 36 x 24 in
Salman Toor, Reunion, 2018, Oil on panel, 12 x 9 in
Salman Toor, Shower Boy, 2018, Oil on panel, 20 x 16 in
Salman Toor, The Green Bar, 2018, Oil on panel, 18 x 12 in
Salman Toor, The Palm Reader (Large), 2018, Oil on canvas, 50.5 x 47 in
Salman Toor, The Palm Reader (Small), 2018, Oil on panel, 20 x 16 in
Salman Toor, The Reader, 2018, Oil on panel, 9 x 12 in
Salman Toor, Floating Shelf I, 2018, Oil on panel, 36 x 24 in
Salman Toor, Floating Shelf II, 2018, Oil on panel, 36 x 24 in
Salman Toor, Eleventh Street, 2018, Oil on canvas, 51 x 67 in
Salman Toor, Humiliated Ancestor #5, 2016, Oil on panel, 10 x 8 in
Salman Toor, Mother, 2015, Oil on canvas, 12 x 9 in
Salman Toor, The Toast, 2015, Oil on canvas, 27 x 23 in
Salman Toor, For Allen Ginsberg, 2015, Oil on canvas, 47 x 168 in (diptych)
Salman Toor, Transliteration Game, 2015, Oil on canvas, 18 x 17 in
Salman Toor, Rooftop Party with Ghosts 3, 2015, Oil on canvas, 46.5 x 72 in
Salman Toor, Newscaster II, 2014, Charcoal, chalk and marker on paper, 20 x 26 in
Salman Toor, Girl with Driver, 2013, Oil on canvas, 53 x 58 in
Salman Toor, Posing for a Baroque Scene in My Studio, 2009, Oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in
Salman Toor, After Degas, 2009, Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 in
As compared to the previous year, 2021 allowed art to stage a comeback with shows and exhibitions.
Born in Lahore and based in New York, the painter Salman Toor depicts the lives of queer, South Asian men in imagined surroundings that draw as much from the Old Masters as they do from the modern metropolis. Toor’s scenes are often casual – his figures dance at house parties and stare into smartphones – but always meticulously composed.
A contemporary American painter of African American and South Asian descent who lives in Weston, Connecticut, Mequitta Ahuja casts herself as mythic warriors, epic heroes, and power figures descending from traditions across cultures. She synthesizes her multicultural heritage into works that evoke the process of identity construction.
Aicon Gallery is delighted to offer our warmest congratulations to artist and friend Saad Qureshi on being commissioned by NOVA to create a major new site-specific public installation for the district of Victoria in Central London. The project launches on November 22, 2016 and "looks at the portability of landscapes, and the human mind as a vehicle that allows places to travel, to be carried in the memory from one location to another,” Qureshi explains.
We are delighted to announce the participation of Salman Toor in the 2016 edition of the prestigious Kochi-Muziris Biennale, which runs from December 12, 2016 through March 29, 2017. Toor's work, installed in the Aspinwall section of the Biennale, will consist of a large installation of works on canvas both inspired by and presented alongside his multi-media collaboration with exiled Pakistani poet Hasan Mujtaba, which was born of the artist's 2015 exhibition Resident Alien at Aicon Gallery, New York.
New York City has facilitated my cobbling together of seemingly divergent understandings of developing societies seething in turmoil, along with the microcosms of cultures like Brooklyn’s art scene. Since I left Lahore, my work has developed in more abstract directions in order to host and superimpose imagined narratives and homelands in which personal and global concerns intersect.
