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Lot Essay
I grew up drawing and painting and thinking of the body, the body as a tool of meditation, the body as the site of memory, fantasy, and sensuality. I’m not really attracted to pure abstraction. When I draw, my wrist or elbow naturally traces the lines of a body though the image can move between abstraction and representation.
—Salman Toor
Born in Lahore, Pakistan, Salman Toor moved to Ohio to study painting before moving to the Pratt Institute and settling in New York. Toor used these contrasting experiences to create a fascinating duality of influence stating, “I attempt to think about my experience in Lahore and in New York City seamlessly [...] For me, the in-between spaces are metaphorical/allegorical spaces of bureaucracy and suspicion. They can take on the feeling of an inner psychic space of some of the characters. They are certainly rooted in the diasporic experience and in the idea that you may not belong anywhere while thinking that you belong in multiple places. To present yourself on the cusp of another world is to be seen” (Artist statement, ‘Blurring the Lines between Public and Private: Salman Toor Interviewed by Cassie Packard’, BOMB Magazine, 12 February 2021).
This sense of conflicted belonging is also reflected in Toor’s influences. “I grew up looking at a mix of images from Indian and European art history”, he recalls. “Images of Mughal princes and fakirs next to contemporary (and very badly painted) faux-folk paintings of pretty peasant women in tight tops and large nose rings carrying clay water jars on their heads, and cheap framed prints of Thomas Gainsborough’s or Peter Lely’s portraits of Mrs.-so-and-so. These images became part of my nostalgia for my childhood, but also a space of escape and fantasy during my years growing up” (Artist statement, Ibid., 2021).
While in school, Toor studied art history intently and focused on learning the techniques of artists like Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, and the elegant Rococo canvases of Jean-Antoine Watteau. “Instead of moving with the times, I wanted an academic education in painting,” he noted about his predilection for the past. “I wanted to be as good as the white old masters. In fact, I was happy only when I could pretend that I was a 17th or 18th century painter living in Madrid, Venice or Holland” (Artist statement, A. Angelos, “‘I wanted to be as good as the white old masters’: meet painter Salman Toor,” It’s Nice That, 7 November 2019). The young artist took inspiration from the masters’ approach to realism and modelling with rich color and dramatic light, a lesson that still informs much of his work.
Combining his interest in Western artistic styles with those of his native Pakistan, Toor paints perceived outsiders with the visual language of those in power. Hinging upon his intimate representations of communities separate from the straight, white hegemony, the artist tells his own story and the stories of those he loves with vivacity and a gentle touch in equal measure. “I like for the characters in my painting to move between vulnerability and empowerment,” he notes. “I like foolish, marionette-like figures that evoke empathy as immigrants crossing borders, but they also have agency and dignity: things that have not been traditionally associated with our faces and bodies in painting” (Artist statement, N. Gupta, ‘Pakistani-origin, New York-based artist Salman Toor wants to paint a world where the East and West harmonise’, GQ India, 12 March 2020).
—Salman Toor
Born in Lahore, Pakistan, Salman Toor moved to Ohio to study painting before moving to the Pratt Institute and settling in New York. Toor used these contrasting experiences to create a fascinating duality of influence stating, “I attempt to think about my experience in Lahore and in New York City seamlessly [...] For me, the in-between spaces are metaphorical/allegorical spaces of bureaucracy and suspicion. They can take on the feeling of an inner psychic space of some of the characters. They are certainly rooted in the diasporic experience and in the idea that you may not belong anywhere while thinking that you belong in multiple places. To present yourself on the cusp of another world is to be seen” (Artist statement, ‘Blurring the Lines between Public and Private: Salman Toor Interviewed by Cassie Packard’, BOMB Magazine, 12 February 2021).
This sense of conflicted belonging is also reflected in Toor’s influences. “I grew up looking at a mix of images from Indian and European art history”, he recalls. “Images of Mughal princes and fakirs next to contemporary (and very badly painted) faux-folk paintings of pretty peasant women in tight tops and large nose rings carrying clay water jars on their heads, and cheap framed prints of Thomas Gainsborough’s or Peter Lely’s portraits of Mrs.-so-and-so. These images became part of my nostalgia for my childhood, but also a space of escape and fantasy during my years growing up” (Artist statement, Ibid., 2021).
While in school, Toor studied art history intently and focused on learning the techniques of artists like Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, and the elegant Rococo canvases of Jean-Antoine Watteau. “Instead of moving with the times, I wanted an academic education in painting,” he noted about his predilection for the past. “I wanted to be as good as the white old masters. In fact, I was happy only when I could pretend that I was a 17th or 18th century painter living in Madrid, Venice or Holland” (Artist statement, A. Angelos, “‘I wanted to be as good as the white old masters’: meet painter Salman Toor,” It’s Nice That, 7 November 2019). The young artist took inspiration from the masters’ approach to realism and modelling with rich color and dramatic light, a lesson that still informs much of his work.
Combining his interest in Western artistic styles with those of his native Pakistan, Toor paints perceived outsiders with the visual language of those in power. Hinging upon his intimate representations of communities separate from the straight, white hegemony, the artist tells his own story and the stories of those he loves with vivacity and a gentle touch in equal measure. “I like for the characters in my painting to move between vulnerability and empowerment,” he notes. “I like foolish, marionette-like figures that evoke empathy as immigrants crossing borders, but they also have agency and dignity: things that have not been traditionally associated with our faces and bodies in painting” (Artist statement, N. Gupta, ‘Pakistani-origin, New York-based artist Salman Toor wants to paint a world where the East and West harmonise’, GQ India, 12 March 2020).