Salman Toor Exhibition Opens At Courtauld Gallery In London

(MENAFN- USA Art News) The Courtauld Gallery in London is hosting“Someone Like You,” the first European solo exhibition for artist Salman Toor, featuring seven years of his work. The show includes 19 paintings and runs until January 10, 2027. Toor, who is based in New York and was born in Lahore, often depicts queer brown men in his genre paintings.

A notable piece in the exhibition is Toor's 2019 painting, The Bar on 13th St, which serves as a contemporary response to Édouard Manet's 1882 work, Bar at the Folies-Bergère. Both paintings are displayed in the same venue during the exhibition. Curator Elena Crippa noted that 2019 marked a significant turning point for Toor, as he began to more explicitly integrate his personal experiences and queer identity into his art. He refers to paintings such as 2019's Bar Boy as his“coming out pictures.”

Toor's painting style is recognizable for its affectionate caricatures of his subjects, rendered with sketch-like brushstrokes. The works in the exhibition range from convivial scenes, like Three Men in a Taxi (2021), to more solitary and tense portrayals, such as Man with Face Creams and Phone Plug (2019), which reflects the experience of a Pakistani person at US border control post- September 11, 2001. Some pieces, like Twilight Story (2023), blend nostalgia with an ominous tone, depicting the tensions of growing up queer in Lahore, Pakistan.

The exhibition also highlights Toor's connection to Western Old Masters. He created a new commission for the show, Fag Puddle with Carriers (2026), inspired by Lorenzo Lotto's 1550-55 work, The Entombment, also part of the Courtauld's collection. Crippa aims to position Toor within the narrative painting revival of the 2010s, alongside artists such as Nicole Eisenman and Kerry James Marshall. Toor has cited John Currin and Hernan Bas as influences.

Since his breakthrough solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2020, Toor's art market presence has increased, and he was featured prominently in the main exhibition of the 2024 Venice Biennale. Despite this early success, the 42-year-old artist continues to experiment with his technique. Crippa observed that Toor's brushwork is becoming“gradually loosening,” which the artist describes as“distancing himself from the canvas,” leading to more abstract outlines and caresses of his subjects.

Later works, including The Joke (2024), show a loosening of strokes, skewed proportions, collapsing dimensions, and figures appearing as specters, echoing his mid-2010s work, which is not part of this show. Crippa notes that these later pieces“are increasingly not reliant on preparatory drawings.” A dedicated room downstairs features Toor's drawings, which serve both as preparatory sketches and diaristic entries, revealing his precise handwork.

Crippa hopes the Courtauld exhibition will present a broader emotional spectrum than his Whitney show, which Toor felt leaned heavily on themes of joyous communion. Works from his Fag Puddles series, which arrange items from Toor's past in precarious compositions, contribute to this. In a catalogue essay, Toor explains these“fag puddles” as collections of“sissy things that I really like and... [was] made to feel ashamed of when I was growing up.” Crippa suggests that while Toor's 2010s work centered on coming out, his current artistic direction delves into uncovering latent wounds, presenting him as a painter of psychodrama in addition to gay sociality. The Whitney Museum has previously exhibited Toor's work, connecting his practice to the American art scene.

Source: The Art Newspaper

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