Salman Toor
Toor's paintings in the new show include "Three Kissers" (left), and "Coral Room" (right)
Salman Toor needed a better perspective.
Backing slowly away from his easel, the 42-year-old artist closed one eye and raised a thumb. He arched his back to gain a few more centimeters of distance and then snapped upright. Exasperation led to acceptance. He buried any doubts and raised a paintbrush, once again, to the emerald-green portrait of his mystery man in heart-shaped sunglasses.
On a morning in March, the walls were covered with dozens of new drawings, paintings and etchings that Toor has created over the last few years in anticipation of his largest exhibition to date, “Wish Maker,” which opens May 2 across Luhring Augustine’s two galleries in Manhattan. The show aims to reintroduce the artist — who was born in Lahore, Pakistan — as one of the most fascinating painters of his generation, capable of remixing old European techniques into contemporary scenes of queer desire and the immigrant experience.
This was Toor’s first chance at seeing everything in one room to decide which pictures he is comfortable exhibiting at a time when his work has become more politically conflicted and emotionally raw.
“There is a lingering question,” the artist said. “What am I doing here in America?”
Receiving his United States citizenship in 2019 and committing to life in New York felt like he was leaving his family behind to some degree. His parents remained supportive but distant; they have never seen one of his major shows in person because, he suggested, of the frank depictions of queer sexuality that run counter to their conservative community in Pakistan.
“It is too long of a conceptual distance to be comprehended,” Toor explained of his parents.
Those boundaries have remained fixed, even as Toor’s celebrity has grown in international circles on the heels of last year’s Venice Biennale, titled “Stranieri Ovunque — Foreigners Everywhere.” In an exhibition, he presented a septet of paintings that he said was “about feelings of empowerment, the humiliation of sometimes moving from one culture to another, and, I guess, the cost of that freedom for someone like me.”
Adriano Pedrosa, the biennale’s curator, said that Toor had a singular style. “I think it is very duplicitous work,” he said. “It’s not very straightforward. It is sexy; sometimes it is even violent. But on the other hand it is gorgeous painting.”
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