Intimate scenes of belonging
The Courtauld Gallery requires advanced registration. Pre-book tickets using code SBYTOOR26.
The Pakistani-American figurative painter Salman Toor, who has risen to art-world acclaim in recent years, receives his first major solo European exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery. Nineteen paintings, all created since 2019, explore moments of human interaction, rendered in the artist’s signature expressive style — elongated figures set in a world of celadon haze — which are being shown alongside a selection of drawings. Informed by personal experiences and referencing Old Master forebears, Toor’s scenes often center queer South Asian men in acts of friendship and intimacy, exuding what painter John Currin has termed an “easy glamour.” “Ghost Ball” (2023), from the Pinault Collection, is one of Toor’s largest and most ambitious paintings; the tableau of dancing figures references a work attributed to Pandit Seu, an 18th-century Indian artist.
Salman Toor, “Ghost Ball,” 2023. © Salman Toor, courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and Thomas Dane Gallery. Photo by Farzad Owrang
