Role: Co-Curator

For his first museum solo exhibition, Salman Toor (b. 1983) presents new and recent oil paintings. Known for his small-scale figurative works that combine academic technique and a quick, sketch-like style, Toor offers intimate views into the imagined lives of young, queer Brown men residing between New York City and South Asia. Recurring color palettes and references to art history heighten the emotional impact of Toor’s paintings and add a fantastical element to his narratives drawn from lived experience. 

Lush interior scenes depict friends dancing, playing with puppies, and gazing into their smartphones. In these idealistic settings, Toor’s figures are freed from the impositions placed upon them by the outside world. In contrast, his more muted tableaus highlight moments of passivity to convey nostalgia or alienation. One painting features a forlorn man whose possessions are on display for the scrutiny of airport security officers; another renders unspoken tensions around a family dinner table palpable. Taken as a whole, 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: How Will I Know is organized by Christopher Y. Lew, Nancy and Fred Poses Curator, and Ambika Trasi, curatorial assistant.

Salman Toor: How Will I Know is part of the Whitney’s emerging artists program, sponsored by Nordstrom. Generous support is provided by Further Forward Foundation, the John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation, and the Manitou Fund. Additional support is provided by the Artists Council, Luhring Augustine, and Graham Steele and Ulysses de Santi.

Image: Installation view of Salman Toor: How Will I Know (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, November 13, 2020–April 4, 2021). From left to right: Parts and Things, 2019; Bar Boy, 2019; Tea, 2020. Photograph by Ron Amstutz

Source: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/salman-toor

The Self as Cipher: Salman Toor’s Narrative Paintings

By Ambika Trasi

Public Programs

On the occasion of Salman Toor: How Will I Know, Salman Toor speaks with artist Chitra Ganesh about the intersections in their artistic practices. Considering the prolonged omission of South Asian American subjectivity in the historical canon, popular culture, and art in the United Sates, the program highlights both artists’ strategies of mining archival sources and speculative narratives to center queer, Brown, and immigrant experiences. The discussion touches on the progression of these stories entering into mainstream culture in the context of gentrification in New York City, the post-9/11 era, and visibility politics. The conversation is moderated by Ambika Trasi, curatorial assistant. Chitra Ganesh is a visual artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. Her installation A city will share her secrets if you know how to ask is currently on view at Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. Salman Toor primarily lives and works in New York. How Will I Know is his first museum solo exhibition. 

Join Christopher Y. Lew, Nancy and Fred Poses Curator, and Ambika Trasi, curatorial assistant, to explore the current exhibition of recent paintings by Salman Toor. Part of the Whitney’s emerging artists program, How Will I Know is Toor’s first solo exhibition at a museum. In his small-scale figurative works that combine academic technique and a quick, sketch-like style, the artist offers intimate views into the imagined lives of young, queer Brown men residing between New York City and South Asia. Dreamlike color and references to art history bring heightened emotion and an element of fantasy to narratives that are drawn from the artist’s lived experience and explore themes of vulnerability and diasporic community. Lew and Trasi will provide an overview of the exhibition and then take questions from the audience.

Press

“it is hard not to be moved by Salman Toor’s tender and luminous paintings, fifteen of which make up “How Will I Know,” his first solo show in a museum.” —eflux

"Toor is experiencing a massive moment" —W Magazine

"Toor offers intimate views into the imagined lives of young, queer Brown men residing between New York City and South Asia." —Vogue

"Salman Toor belongs to a new generation of figurative painters who use their brushstrokes to unravel realities and utopias faced by communities that help them shape their identities." —Galerie

"Pakistani-origin, New York-based artist Salman Toor wants to paint a world where the East and West harmonise" —GQ India

"Toor’s canvases excite and pique interest with every stroke."—Observer

"Salman Toor’s first solo exhibition . . . is a tribute to those with identities that escape boundaries and binaries."—WNET All Arts

"[Toor's] complex narratives invite a thoughtful dialogue about contemporary queer life."—Forbes

"Salman Toor’s absorbing show at the Whitney depicts the pleasures, tensions, and small moments of gay life."—New York Review of Books

"How Will I Know is a chronicle of the making and unmaking of queer, diasporic identity."—Hyperallergic

"Toor’s scenes of closeness and spontaneous encounter, his renderings of a community (or demimonde), real or imagined, strike a powerful note of something like nostalgia."—4Columns

"As the dozen or so works in How Will I Know will demonstrate, [Toor’s] work seems closer in some ways to, say, Van Gogh’s early paintings"—The New York Times

"Salman Toor lives, and paints, between worlds"—Vulture

"[This] gorgeous show . . . explores the concept of community within the context of a queer, diasporic identity."—NBC News

"The paintings invite us in as we scan over them: dashes of emerald vibrate, cloud-grey lines illuminate, tawny marks speak."—Brooklyn Rail