Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love

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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.”

Salman Toor | Fag Puddle with Candle, Shoe, and Flag | The Salman Toor | Fag Puddle with Candle, Shoe, and Flag | The

The Rose Art Museum will host a reception, open to the public, on Thursday, November 16, at 6 p.m. to celebrate the exhibition. A robust slate of programs, including an artist talk, will activate the show during its presentation. Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love is an extraordinary exhibition that will be on display at the Rose Art Museum from November 16, 2023. This exhibition brings together more than 45 recent paintings and works on paper by the Pakistan-born artist, Salman Toor. Through his art, Toor explores his experiences as a Queer diasporic South Asian man, creating imaginative new worlds that challenge traditional notions of power and sexuality. The exhibition also features Toor’s sketchbooks, offering a unique glimpse into his creative process. Exploring Themes of Desire, Family, and Tradition No! I had a show in New York called Time after Time, and then I used a Sade title for my show at the Baltimore Museum: No Ordinary Love. I’ve done Sade, I’ve done Whitney… Maybe I should do Mariah? Actually, for the Chinese show they wanted me to do another song title, and I said: I’m done. So it’s just called New Paintings and Drawings.

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Toor continued to paint (and sell) art-history-sourced pictures for several years after that, but every so often he would do another work that came completely from his imagination. In 2015, deciding that the new paintings should be seen, he put twenty-three of them in a show called “Resident Alien,” at Aicon Gallery. The Tate, in London, bought “9PM, the News,” and most of the other paintings found buyers, but according to Toor the “Resident Alien” pictures were too much for some of his regular clients. I counted fifty-three men and women and five ghosts in “Rooftop Party with Ghosts,” a seventeen-and-a-half-foot-long triptych in which the figures mingle amiably, sip drinks, flirt, argue, smoke, work cell phones, tell jokes, or just enjoy the night air, under a dark sky that is populated with letters from the Persian alphabet. Many of the subjects have long, pointed noses—a detail that was becoming a Toor trademark—but otherwise the faces are highly individualized, with expressions that were keenly observed and true to life. “For Allen Ginsberg,” a diptych, is almost as densely populated as “Rooftop Party.” In my view, these paintings mark a bold departure that doesn’t quite go anywhere. “I don’t really know how to make a big picture,” Toor told me. “I make small pictures within the big picture.” He was going to keep trying, he said, and if it didn’t work he would be happy to be an artist of small paintings, like Elizabeth Peyton. The discontinuities in a Toor slide show can be epic. I saw photographs of a burly, “really handsome” construction worker doing manly things in Lahore, and of Toor’s uncle’s wedding in the nineteen-sixties, also in Lahore. “This is a miniature from the nineteenth century, after the East India Company was established and the English were the lords and masters of India,” Toor explained. “A style of painting developed at that point, called Company Painting; it was done by local artists, and showed the overlords with their servants and possessions. There’s a power relationship here that I’m very interested in.” We looked at paintings of his friend Alexandra Atiya, and examples of ancient Gandhara sculptures, which, he said, have “a particular hair style I love—a bun in the center of the head, and the hair that cascades down—you also see that in Buddhist art.” On and on it went: an early painting by Philip Guston, and one by Alice Neel (“I just love the speed of it”); Nicole Eisenman’s rendering of a dinner party; Toor’s 2017 portrait of Ali Sethi, singing. Toor's work is included in such museum collections as the Whitney Museum of American Art [16] and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. [17] Work [ edit ] The presentation of Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love at the Honolulu Museum of Art forms part of a national tour.

Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love | Baltimore Museum of Art

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.

Redefining Art Historical Traditions

The inclusion of a variety of works aligns with the museum’s mission statement, which says: “This belief is that art is at the heart of the BMA…with a commitment to artistic excellence and social equity in every decision from art presentation, interpretation, and collecting… creating a museum welcoming to all.” a b c d e f g "The Self as Cipher: Salman Toor's Narrative Paintings". whitney.org . Retrieved 2022-02-17. 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 offers a glimpse into the artist’s creative process through the display of two of Toor’s sketchbooks. These sketchbooks illuminate the journey from concept to creation, providing a deeper understanding of Toor’s artistic vision. By drawing on his memories of life in Pakistan, Toor evokes images that navigate the complexities of South Asian culture and the importance of family ties. His distinct “emerald green” palette captures his hopes and anxieties about the Queer experience in both his native Pakistan and his adopted home of New York City. Redefining Art Historical Traditions Toor said that when he was an art student “there were only four or five people doing what you do”—meaning figurative paintings of real people. “There was you, and—”

Salman Toor - Wikipedia Salman Toor - Wikipedia

Toor’s art explores his experiences as a Queer diasporic South Asian man and challenges traditional art historical traditions. Stop Play Pause Repeat, Lawrie Shabibi Gallery, Dubai Letters to Taseer II, Drawing Room Gallery, Lahore 2010 [28] 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 Doodler shows a child hiding in a bedroom, drawing away; The Game has an ominous father figure standing, tense, over a small boy caught playing with dolls. Does making these pictures help you better face your past?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. For the Rose presentation of No Ordinary Love, the exhibition will be nestled within the museum’s permanent collection, creating formal and thematic dialogues between Toor’s paintings and drawings and other works of art. The Rose Art Museum is the final venue for Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love; previous venues included the Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, Hawaii, and the Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, Florida. The exhibition was organized by and debuted at the Baltimore Museum of Art and curated by Dr. Asma Naeem, Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Acclaimed writers Evan Moffitt and Hanya Yangagihara contributed essays to the exhibition’s accompanying illustrated catalogue. Much has been made of the glowing green auras of Salman Toor’s work: Toor’s palette drapes ordinary moments in a mantle of dramatic tension. The paintings in Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love at the Baltimore Museum of Art are filled with the flotsam of performance: clown suits, feather boas, spotlights. While writing about Toor’s paintings the language of the theater constantly comes to mind: the set dressing, the costumes, the props, the actors in the paintings, the paintings as actors. Above all, the most profound dialogue at play in the exhibition is between Toor and the art historical tradition. Exchange Show, Montclair University MFA Gallery, Montclair, New Jersey Pratt MFA Thesis Show, Stueben Gallery, Brooklyn [28] The exhibition is curated by Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Chief Curator, and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, including essays by Naeem as well as writers Evan Moffitt and Hanya Yanagihara.

Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love - Topos Graphics Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love - Topos Graphics

Toor’s art traces a wide swath of art history to resonate in the present,” wrote Naeem in the catalog’s foreword. “Within these many narrative threads, we are achingly aware of two fundamental and entwined human truths: we all want to see clearly and to be seen clearly.” I am an aspirational minimalist, and I fail at it, but I keep trying. I’m a hoarder, but I like to organise. I actually cleaned last night, and I’m in a very organised apartment right now – it’s just giving me shivers of pleasure to walk around it. Completely. When I graduated from Ohio and moved to New York, there were only a few artists doing it. But I guess, with the culture changing, from 9/11 all the way to BLM and Gen Z, personal stories have become so much more important. Also, with the rise of social media, everyone has to speak for themselves. Those stories, frankly, have changed the conversation in a way that I never thought it could be changed. That is incredible. 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.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. No Ordinary Love captures the ways in which Toor upends art historical traditions to center brown, queer figures and to investigate outdated concepts of power and sexuality. The exhibition will also include a selection of the artist’s sketchbooks. We are honored to present this riveting exhibition and to provide our audiences with an opportunity to experience Toor’s breathtaking work first-hand,” said Dr. Gannit Ankori, Henry and Lois Foster Director and Chief Curator of the Rose Art Museum, who organized the Rose’s presentation of the traveling exhibition. “Toor is a stellar painter and virtuoso draftsman who has created a body of work that is beautiful and profoundly significant. Works like Boys in Bed (2021), recently acquired by the Rose Art Museum, and others in the show are imbued with sensuality, vulnerability, and humor, showcasing the artist’s deep art historical knowledge, spanning European, American, and South Asian traditions.” I grew up in a homophobic culture; I went to an all-boys’ prep school, and I also grew up in a pretty conservative, culturally Muslim family. There was zero visibility of forms of affection in public spaces. So yes, for me to do these paintings is to be on the verge of a threshold. But there’s another kind of threshold I’ve crossed in the near-20 years I’ve spent in New York. In 2006, when I came here from Ohio, this was a post-9/11 country, so there wasn’t any of the Gen Z discussion about gender or misogyny, things like that. The culture changed, and I changed. I felt like I’d been doing paintings that were very, very academic, and I wasn’t really interested in contemporary art. But I was skirting around the more meaningful things in my life, which was the struggle to be out, to make connections between the culture in which I was born and the culture that I have adopted, and the friendships that mean everything to me. So I decided to do other work in the studio. It was just bursting out of me. Visit the Baltimore Museum of Art for yourself, open Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.