Salman Toor, Thunderstorm (2021). Oil on panel. 76.2 x 60.96 cm. © Salman Toor. Courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York. Photo: Farzad Owrang.
Salman Toor, Construction Men (2021.) Oil on canvas. 152.4 x 121.92 cm. © Salman Toor. Courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York. Photo: Farzad Owrang.
Salman Toor, Three Friends in a Cab (2021). Oil on panel. 40.64 x 50.80 cm. © Salman Toor. Courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York. Photo: Farzad Owrang.
Sexuality and satire collide in Salman Toor‘s paintings.
Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love (23 February–4 June 2023) at Tampa Museum of Art in Florida focuses on the Pakistani-American painter’s deeply personal oeuvre.
Born and raised in Lahore, Toor’s main body of work is dedicated to figurative painting, with particular focus on imagined narratives surrounding young queer brown men existing in spaces outside their birthplace.
The Tampa Museum’s presentation beautifully dedicates scope to the artist’s own queer identity, unfolding themes of sexuality, desire, power and family while upending the traditional rhetoric surrounding art history.
With talent comes demand, and it comes as no surprise that Toor’s paintings have become regular lots in recent auction sales.
Toor’s early oil painting Untitled (2006) is up for sale at Sotheby’s forthcoming Contemporary Curated New York sale (9 March 2023), along with two later (and arguably stronger) works, The Palm Reader (2018) and Boy With Neck Chain and Plant (2021).
Main image: Salman Toor, Three Friends in a Cab (2021) (detail). Oil on panel. 40.64 x 50.80 cm. © Salman Toor. Courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York. Photo: Farzad Owrang.
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