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Toor is based in – and shaped by – New York City

Toor moved to the United States from Pakistan in 2002, aged 20, to study painting and drawing at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio – largely on an international student scholarship and having never visited the country before. After completing his postgraduate study at the Pratt Institute in New York in 2009, he stayed, and the city has shaped his work and his life ever since, creating portraits (a favoured genre) and group figure compositions addressing themes of social disparity and exclusion connected with notions of class. His breakthrough moment came in 2020-21, when the Whitney Museum of American Art gave him his first museum solo show, ��

From Lahore to New York: A practice bridging places and cultures

Toor was born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1983, and grew up and trained there before his move to the United States. Living between “two worlds” (The New Yorker / The New York Times), Toor’s oeuvre can – and should – be understood in both the Western Renaissance tradition and Pakistani-South Asian art history. As well as artists like Manet, Lorenzo Lotto, Bruegel, and Velásquez, we also find much insight from South Asian artists like Anwar Saeed, Bhupen Khakhar, and Sunil Gupta. ��

He speaks candidly about the distance between his two homes:��

“Even though I had been living in New York for many years, I grew up in Lahore, a place where queer love is not openly celebrated. In fact, in public spaces it has to be quite hidden, and I would go [in my art] into these surreal or allegorical places to depart from literal storytelling.”��

Find out more in Aziz Sohail’s essay, You Probably Think This Work is About You, in the catalogue.��

His paintings are about belonging, identity, and being seen

Toor’s paintings are self-aware and humorous renderings of human encounters, relationships and social exchanges that sit at the intersection of our physical lives and the digital sphere. While his figures and scenes are fictional, they are rooted in his personal experiences and memories. ��

Speaking of his works, he says they “depict queer and immigrant lives that straddle different cultures and inhabit the tension between intimacy and exposure, belonging and estrangement. What it means to find a community, but also the daily costs associated with visibility”. ��

Toor has spoken about his own generation’s relationship to painting’s history:��

“I see myself as part of a multi-ethnic generation of painters in the US who are taking on art history to update, critique, and tweak it, and to write ourselves into its rich history.” – Salman Toor, 2021��

His own experiences also feature heavily in his work. In 2019, Toor executed several paintings of parties and gatherings in bars or domestic interiors in predominantly green tones. Of these works, Toor explained that: ��

“I was using painting to be “out” – and to tell stories I had censored for years”. ��

This group of works was inspired by Dutch and Italian ‘tavern’ paintings from the post-Bruegel era, which depict comedic, intimate genre scenes of peasant life. Like those, Toor’s representations of dimly lit nightlife are filled with flirtatious interactions and characterised by informality and playfulness.��

In constant dialogue with art history

Toor is an avid student of art history, pulling in everything from Bruegel’s peasants to Watteau’s tavern scenes. A clear example is The Bar on East 13th (2019), directly inspired by a visit Toor made to 91Ӱ�� Gallery in 2017 where he saw Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. He described what that encounter unlocked:��

“For the first time, I was able to spill out my love of art history without being too intentional about it… It helped me paint my way into finding a community in New York City; it was also like coming out through painting.”��

Someone Like You is Toor’s first solo exhibition in Europe

Toor has had major exhibitions internationally and recently participated in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2024). This marks his debut museum show on the continent, with many of the works never-seen-before in Britain.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a display of Toor’s drawings in the Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery. Showcasing Toor’s mastery of drawing and the way it informs his practice as a painter, the display will include Fag Puddle in Vitrine (2021), acquired by 91Ӱ�� in 2024.��