SALMAN TOOR

(B. 1983)

Pre-Drinks
2018

Footnotes

Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

Exhibition
Lahore, Lahore Biennale, Are you Here?, 2018


Recognised for his evocative compositions that combine the present with the art historical past, Salman Toor is considered one of the most exciting emerging artists in the world of figurative painting. Toor creates masterful canvases that depict the convergence of intimate everyday moments set against contemporary, domestic scenes that convey a feeling of warmth, nostalgia, but also that of alienation and contemplation.

This present work, Pre-Drinks, was exhibited at the Lahore Biennale in 2018, the year it was executed. The composition wonderfully embodies the artist's fascination and focus on the human form, representations of male identity whilst revealing a sense of mystery and intimacy, to stunning effect. Here the viewer stumbles upon a quiet moment between two young men; it is a moment of contemplation; they are relaxed in their comfortable contemporary surrounding enjoying food and drinks amongst books and magazines. We are reminded that this is a painting of the modern day with the inclusion of a mobile phone or tablet that engages the figure on the right. Toor's works are often imbued with an air of the past mixed with modern life; indeed, upon moving to New York, Toor came into his stride as an artist who crafted hybrid tableaus that sought to marry East and West, perhaps a meditative contemplation on his past and present. He often acknowledges his childhood experiences in Pakistan, particularly in the influences of Pakistani advertisements and glamorous images from his mother's magazines, and here on the edge of the table is a magazine depicting a figure in Eastern attire.

Toor's style of painting is easily discernible; his paintings employ a palette of bold colour applied in a painterly Mannerist style, layering the canvases with fluid brushstrokes. Toor incorporates his signature palette of emerald green in the clothing of his male figure; the artist once commented that the glamorous tones of emerald green evoked the nocturnal allure and fantasy of a freely queer life.

There is a sense of ease between these two men, they are not actively engaging yet are present and content in one another's company, and as the title suggests this is perhaps just the beginning of their evening together. Toor has often described his figures as undernourished and hairy bodies of colour occupying familiar bourgeois urban spaces. He envisions them as educated and creative individuals perhaps navigating the artist's life in New York City amidst shifting ideas about race, immigration, foreignness, and American identity. These figures sometimes resemble lifestyle images, representing fantasies about himself and his community, he seeks to create imagined scenes in which he and his friends are totally free to be themselves.

Born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, Toor moved to Ohio to study painting before settling in New York. While in Ohio, he studied art history intently and focused on learning the techniques of artists like Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, and the refined Rococo canvases of Jean-Antoine Watteau. "Instead of moving with the times, I wanted an academic education in painting. 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" (the artist in: Ayla Angelos, 'I wanted to be as good as the white old masters': meet painter Salman Toor www.itsnicethat.com, 23 September 2023).

Toor's widely acclaimed first solo museum exhibition, How Will I Know, was on view in 2020-21 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. In late 2022 a major retrospective titled No Ordinary Love, was held at the Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland and later travelled to the Tampa Museum of Art in Florida, the Honolulu Museum of Art in Hawai'i, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University in Massachusetts before closing at M Woods in Beijing earlier this year. Today, Toor's works are held in the permanent collections of the Tate, London, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, M Woods, Beijing and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago among others.

Throughout his current oeuvre, his compositions of the mundane and the memorable moments of his characters' lives, reveals a deeply relatable existence, ultimately creating an opportunity for empathy and private vulnerability through the language of painting which is beautifully evident in this present work.