Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love

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No Ordinary Love: A New Exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of No Ordinary Love: A New Exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of

Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love is a major solo exhibition of work by Pakistani-born artist Salman Toor (b. 1983). Conceived as an enhancement of a traveling exhibition of recent paintings (2020-2022), curated by Dr. Asma Naeem of the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Rose presentation will contextualize Toor’s art by installing it in dialogue with relevant pieces from the museum’s stellar permanent collection. The show will also feature Toor’s drawings and notebooks, shedding light on his creative process. In addition to his paintings and works on paper, Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love also showcases two of Toor’s sketchbooks, providing a glimpse into his creative process. These sketchbooks offer a behind-the-scenes look at how Toor develops his ideas and brings them to life on canvas. By including this element in the exhibition, viewers can gain a deeper understanding of Toor’s artistic journey and the inspiration behind his captivating works. Salman Toor’s sumptuous and insightful figurative paintings depict intimate, quotidian moments in the lives of fictional young, brown, queer men ensconced in contemporary cosmopolitan culture. His work oscillates between heartening and harrowing, seductive and poignant, inviting and eerie. Weaving together contemporary scenes with historical motifs drawn from European, American and South Asian artistic traditions, Toor’s work tells stories of family life, queer desire and immigrant experience. Toor lives and works in New York City but grew up in Lahore, Pakistan, where he was born. Working from this perspective, his paintings center Brown, queer figures and reflect on power and sexuality in shifting cultural environments. Displaying Salman Toor's distinct hybrid compositions, "Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love" explores the artist's experiences as a Queer diasporic South Asian man, creating imaginative new worlds for the 21st century.

Major support for this exhibition is provided by the Further Forward Foundation in memory of Jennifer Combs, with additional support from Adam Green, Beth Marcus, Lance Renner, and the Green Family Art Foundation.

Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love - Medium Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love - Medium

The collection shines with vibrant color through scenes of nighttime taxi rides shared with friends, isolating family gatherings, and painted night scenes that create a world that the viewer could almost walk into. Toor utilizes color intentionally. The vibrant and saturated colors are used to convey emotion. The color green appears throughout his works, and as explained in the exhibit, Toor works with green for its “nocturnal” and alluring quality. Toor has a gift for evoking complex narratives and emotions,” said Tyler Cann, HoMA’s senior curator of modern and contemporary art. “There is real tenderness in his work but also ambiguity, absurdity and humor. His paintings speak to navigating contemporary social life within different, even conflicting, cultural contexts, and we hope that will resonate with the layered communities of Hawai‘i.” Parts and Things,” a green painting of sundry items of clothing and body parts piled on the floor of a closet, previewed Toor’s semi-abstract “Fag Puddle” series. In “Sleeping Boy,” a young man who resembles Toor lies on white sheets so lusciously painted that they look edible, his face and his naked body illuminated by light from an open laptop. Toor’s virtuoso handling of paint brings the images to life, and the stories they tell, whether simple or complex, catch and engage viewers’ attention. The Whitney show launched Toor as an international art star, a role that he has no intention of playing. He joined the Luhring Augustine gallery in 2020, but instead of doubling or tripling his prices on the primary market Toor and the gallery agreed to keep them relatively low and increase them gradually. “I don’t want a big, intimidating number to enter my head while I’m in the studio,” he said to me. “That would really destroy the process.” My high-school friend’s parents collected art, and had libraries; my parents are not really readers. So I had access to the deliciousness of art monographs – Caravaggio and stuff like that. But my grandmother had a bunch of prints of paintings. She had a portrait of this white woman in a grey dress and grey hair, standing against a stone column; I found out later, when I went to college, that it was The Honourable Mrs Graham by Thomas Gainsborough. I just remember feeling something seeing these artists from Europe: from another part of the world, from a completely different time. There was a sense of this very tragic heroism – of finding both the romantic and the grisly. That was very valuable. The museum has been a favorite among students in the surrounding universities of Loyola, Johns Hopkins, and Towson, as it is within walking distance and admission is always free. It is the largest art museum in Baltimore, with a connecting sculpture garden, allowing for hours of artistic exploration through many mediums and forms.Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love is a captivating exhibition featuring over 45 recent paintings and works on paper by Pakistan-born artist Salman Toor. The exhibition, on view at the Rose Art Museum from November 16, 2023, to February 11, 2024, explores Toor’s experiences as a Queer diasporic South Asian man. Through his unique blending of historical motifs with contemporary moments, Toor creates imaginative new worlds that challenge outdated concepts of power and sexuality. The exhibition also showcases Toor’s sketchbooks, offering insight into his creative process. Don’t miss this opportunity to experience Toor’s breathtaking work firsthand.• Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love presents over 45 recent paintings and works on paper by the Pakistan-born artist. Curators have noted Toor's paintings make use of bright, saturated colors to evoke emotion. [18] Green is one of the most notable colors in his work. The artist cites the “nocturnal" [19] quality that green can give to a painting, as well as its conflicting associations with poison and glamor. Toor works from memory and often depicts his friends in his paintings. Exchange Show, Montclair University MFA Gallery, Montclair, New Jersey Pratt MFA Thesis Show, Stueben Gallery, Brooklyn [28] Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love features more than 45 paintings and works on paper made between 2019 and 2022, that weave together motifs found in historical paintings with recognizable 21st-century moments to create new worlds based in Toor’s imagination. The exhibition captures the ways in which Toor engages with art history to center brown, queer figures and to challenge enshrined notions of power and sexuality. Ah – that’s simple. I have to refrain from taking a picture of it when a session is over – which takes six to seven hours, at least, because it takes me three hours to just control myself. After that, if I’m into it, I’m like: “I’m just gonna live here, I’m gonna die here in front of it, this is my life! I have nothing else to do.” But I don’t photograph it. When I come in the next day, I sit in front of it, I open my eyes – and I know.

Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love | Baltimore Museum of Art Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love | Baltimore Museum of Art

The Met's Libraries and Research Centers provide unparalleled resources for research and welcome an international community of students and scholars. It’s about a sense of humour. A lot of the time, I might be painting someone really vulnerable, and I feel like if it was a pity party or too sanctimonious, it would just kill the painting. I want it to have a marionette feel: a little bit wooden, but at the same time someone who can be hurt. HONOLULU— The Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA) presents the Pacific region’s debut of rising star Salman Toor (b. 1983, Pakistan) in Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love. On view July 13-Oct. 8, the exhibition features approximately 40 recent paintings and works on paper in the artist’s unique style of contemporary genre painting.A vital part of Hawaiʻi’s cultural landscape, HoMA is a unique gathering place where art, global worldviews, culture and education converge in the heart of Honolulu. In addition to an internationally renowned permanent collection, the museum houses innovative exhibitions, an art school, an independent art house theatre, a café and a museum shop within one of the most beautiful, iconic buildings in Hawaiʻi.