Salman Toole is a Pakistani-born American painter. He is best known for his figurative paintings, which often depict thin, brown and hairy men. In August 2023, rumors of his marriage to Pakistani pop singer Ali Sethi went viral and made headlines.
Wiki/Biography
Salman Toor was born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1983 (40 years; 2023-0). He attended Atchison College in Lahore, Pakistan. In 2006, he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting), cum laude, from Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, USA. In 2009 he received his Master of Fine Arts (Painting) from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. In 2019, he obtained U.S. citizenship.
appearance
Height (approximately): 5′10″
Hair color: black
Eye color: black
sexual orientation
He revealed in an interview that he told his parents he was gay when he was fifteen.
family
Parents and siblings
His father is a businessman and his mother is a housewife. He has two younger siblings.
husband/spouse
In August 2023, there were rumors that Salman Toure and the popular Pakistani singer Ali Sisi held an intimate wedding in New York; however, Ali denied marrying Salman and refuted this statement. Salman and Ali have been good friends for a long time. They first met in an art class at Atchison College.
Salman Toure (right) and Ali Sisi
Profession
Tour’s art was auctioned for the first time at Phillips Auction House in London on October 20, 2020, where his work “Aashiana” (Hearth and Home) sold for £138,600, twice the expected price. His art work Liberty Porcelain (2012) was sold at the same auction house in London on December 15, 2020 for £378,000.
Liberty Porcelain by Salman Toor
In June 2021, his painting “Girl with Driver” (2013) was sold at Phillips auction house in Hong Kong for US$890,000, five times higher than the estimate. In 2020-2021, he exhibited some of his paintings in the solo exhibition “Salman Tull: How Did I Know” at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His painting Museum Boy (2021) was on display at the Frick Collection for a year (2021-2022) as part of his exhibition Living Histories: Queer Perspectives and Old Masters, in which his The painting is exhibited together with two paintings entitled “Officer and Laughing Girl” (painted between 1655-1660) and “Mistress and Maid” (1667), by the ancient painter Johannes Vermeer .
The Museum Boys by Salman Toor
In 2021, he created illustrations for the book Jungle Nama written by Amitav Ghosh.
The cover of the book “Jungle Nama”
Theme and style
Toor’s artwork is primarily based on themes such as LGBTQ, the treatment of brown people in society, young people in public and private spaces, and the role of technology in daily life. In his paintings, he covers a range of subjects from art history to queer culture to postcolonialism. His paintings are predominantly figurative, often depicting thin, malnourished, hairy male figures. In an interview, talking about the themes and style of his artwork, he said:
I love these seemingly undernourished, furry colors inhabiting the familiar spaces of bourgeois urban interiors. I think of these boys or men as well-educated, creative people who were living the life of an artist in New York City in the midst of changing ideas about race, immigration, and foreignness, and what it meant to be an American. What are you wearing? Sometimes they look like lifestyle images. They are also fantasies about myself and my community. “
“Reunion” by Salman Toole
According to some curators, Tour’s use of bright and saturated colors in his paintings evokes emotions. Among these colors, green plays an important role in his creations. In an interview, he spoke of the nocturnal quality that green can bring to a painting, as well as its paradoxical association with toxicity and seduction. He said,
I chose green for aesthetic reasons. It has some nocturnal stuff, like night vision. It’s alluring and charming, but it also has connotations of poison and potions. But most importantly, I love that it’s not a sentimental color. “
“Four Friends” by Salman Toole
exhibition
Solo Exhibition Selections
- Salman Tull: An Extraordinary Love, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL; Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, HI; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Walther Hamburg, Massachusetts (2022-2024)
- Salman Toole: New Paintings, M WOODS, Beijing, China; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Australia (2022-2023)
- Salman Toole: Music Room, Hayward Gallery Billboard, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, UK (2021-2022)
- How Did I Know, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2020-2021)
- Salman Toor: I Know a Place, Nature Morte Gallery, New Delhi, India (2019-2020)
- New Paintings, O Art Space, Lahore, Pakistan (2019)
- Again and Again, Aicon Gallery, New York, NY (2018)
- Short Stories, Canvas Gallery, Karachi Pakistan (2017)
- Salman Toor: Paintings from “The Electrician,” Honey Ramka, New York, NY (2015)
- “Alien Inhabited”, Aicon Gallery, New York, NY (2015)
- “Close”, Canvas Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan (2014)
- “The Happy Servant”, Aicon Gallery, New York, NY (2013)
- I ♥ Kitsch, Rohtas II Gallery, Lahore, Pakistan (2011)
- New Paintings, Canvas Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan (2010)
- Three Paintings, Kahlo Gallery, Lebrón-Wiggins-Pran Cultural Center, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA (2009)
Selected group performances
2023-2024
- Capturing the Moment, Tate Modern, London, UK
- The New York Century: Imagining One Hundred Years of New York, Museum of the City of New York, New York, NY
2023
- Beautiful, Vivid, Independent, Hill Arts Foundation, New York, NY
- Brave New World: 16 Painters of the 21st Century, Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands
- “Very Small Feelings”, Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh Shilpakara Academy, Dhaka, Bangladesh; Kiran Nadar Art Museum, New Delhi, India
2022-2023
- Dark Light: Realism in the Post-Truth Era, Aïshti Foundation, Jal El Dib, Lebanon
- Fragile Manifesto: The Many Lives and Deaths of Louise Brunet, 16th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art, MacLeon, Lyon, France
- Fragile Manifesto: A World of Infinite Hope, 16th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art, URDLA, Villepinte, France
2022
- Based on a true story, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
- Brave New World: 16 Painters of the 21st Century, Museum De Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands
- Lunch on the Grass, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, California
- My reflection on you, The Perimeter, London, UK
- Pictus Porrectus: Reconsidering a Full-Length Portrait of the Isaac Bell House and Rosecliff Salon, Art and Newport, Newport County Conservancy, Newport, RI
2021-2022
- Any Distance Between Us, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, Rhode Island
- Living History: Queer Perspectives and the Old Masters, Frick Madison, New York, NY
2021
- I’ll Keep You in My Heart, FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY
- Breakfast Under the Tree, Carl Friedman Gallery, Margate, UK
- Drawing Biennale 2021, Drawing Room, London, UK
- “Equal Sentiment”, Grimm Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Playhouse: A Series of Installations, Luhring Augustine Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York
- Plus One, Luhring Augustine, New York, NY
2020
- Art on the Grid: 50 Artists Reflect on the Pandemic, Public Art Fund, multiple locations, New York, NY
- Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL
- Form and Figure: Body of Art, Grosvenor Gallery, London, UK
- Myself, Cohen Gallery, Los Angeles, California
- Xenia: Portrait at the Crossroads, Marianne Boesky, New York, NY
2019
- Home is not a place, Anat Ebgi Gallery, Los Angeles, California
- Existential Similarity: Portraits in the Age of Selfies, Aicon Gallery, New York, NY
- Them, Galerie Perrotin, New York, New York
2018
- are u there? , Lahore Biennale 2018, Lahore, Pakistan
2016
- GoFigure, Aicon Gallery, New York, NY
- Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, India
Year 2014
- Wrech, Honey Lanka, New York, New York
year 2013
- Cinema Fans: Art Beyond Technology and Movement, Twelve Doors Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
- “Return”, Rohtas II Gallery, Lahore, Pakistan
2012
- Letter to Taseer II, Drawing Room Gallery, Lahore, Pakistan
- Stop, Play, Pause, Repeat, Lawrie Shabibi Gallery, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
year 2010
- About Us, Canvas Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan
Year 2009
- Exchange Exhibition, Montclair University MFA Gallery, Montclair, NJ
- I think the word is dignity, Lumenhouse Gallery, Brooklyn, New York
- Pratt MFA Thesis Exhibition, Steuben Gallery, Brooklyn, New York
- “Superficial”, Kips Gallery, New York, NY
- “Wound”, Aicon Gallery, London, UK
Year 2008
- Prater in Lucca, Piazza del Anfiteatro, Lucca, Italy
Facts/Trivia
- Toole is a member of the LGBTQ painter collective New Queer Intimists. The group also included his contemporary painters such as Doron Langberg, Louis Fratino, Kyle Coniglio, Anthony Cudahy, TM Davy and Devan Shimoyama.
- The artist revealed in an interview that his artwork was initially inspired by Pakistani advertisements. However, when he later began to focus more on art, he found inspiration in paintings from older eras such as the Baroque, Neoclassical, and Rococo periods.
- In interviews, he revealed that he was inspired by artists such as Van Dyck, Peter Paul Reubens, Caravaggio and Watteau.
- Most of the works in Tull’s solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, “How Did I Know” (2020-2021), were purchased by museum donors before the show even opened.
- At the beginning of his career Tours showed little interest in modern art, instead painting skilled and modern versions of ancient portraits, landscapes and scenes from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century. In an interview, he talked about it and said:
I think a lot of modern art is rubbish – boring and deliberately depressing. ” He added: “In school I was fascinated by Renaissance art because it captured something fundamental – realism. I want to be as good as those painters. “
- In 2012, he began experimenting in his paintings, incorporating cartoon images of his friends and placing them in the contemporary world. However, the photos haven’t been shared in several years. In 2015, he presented a bunch of these photos in an exhibition called “Resident Aliens” at New York’s Aicon Gallery. That’s when he realized he was on to something special. His breakthrough came in 2020, when he exhibited 15 of his works at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
- In 2013, he held his first solo exhibition at Aicon Gallery in New York.
- In his work, he brings back the figurative art and storytelling styles popular in the 1990s in a new way, expressing his feelings about queerness in a bold and open way. Some of his paintings based on queer themes include News at 9 PM, Reunion, Green Bar, Boy in Bed and Boy in Bar.
- He had a keen interest in painting since he was a child and started painting when he was five years old. In an interview, he revealed that he liked to draw paintings of women when he was a child, but his aunt encouraged him to draw sports cars. Speaking about this in an interview, he said:
My aunt encouraged me to draw sports cars, so I drew a boxy, poorly imagined car with a girl’s head sticking out of the window. “
- In 2019, Tour held a solo exhibition at the Nature Morte Gallery in New Delhi, but due to the tense relations between India and Pakistan at the time, he was unable to participate in the exhibition. However, some of his paintings were later sent to a museum in India and were well received by the audience.
- In 2019, the Joan Mitchell Foundation honored Toole with the Painter and Sculptor Award.
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education