Salman Toor
Man in Fur Collar and Ribbon
Drawing has been pre-sold
All bids
| Year | 2021 |
|---|---|
| Medium | Ink on watercolour paper |
| Dimensions | 29.7 x 21 cm |
| Top pick | Edward Lee, collector; Giles Deacon, fashion designer |
| Pre-sold |  Drawing has been pre-sold. |
About the work
Rendered in charcoal, gouache, ink, and ballpoint, Man in Fur Collar and Ribbon, 2021 depicts a solitary figure, his head cast down, seemingly in anticipation or apprehension. The imagery is familiar to the artist’s oeuvre: a quiet scene made profound by the vulnerability and deep empathy given to and exemplified by the subject – yet distinct from the artist’s well-known imagery of intimate, sensual scenes. Here is a space of vulnerability, suggestive of both literal and metaphorical crossings into new places and communities.
About the artist:
Born 1983 Lahore, Salman Toor lives and works in New York. Graduated from BFA with honours, Painting and Drawing, Ohio Wesleyan University (2006); and MFA Painting, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn (2009).
Toor’s sumptuous and insightful figurative paintings depict intimate, quotidian moments in the fictional lives of young, brown, queer men ensconced in contemporary cosmopolitan culture, touching on themes of art history and colonialism. Central to his work are the anxieties and the comedy of identity. He playfully engages the history of European painting, particularly certain Baroque, Rococo, Romantic, and Impressionist masters with whom he shares an aesthetic kinship; he disrupts entrenched attitudes toward gender and race prevalent within this tradition by introducing elements of fantasy, humour, and cultural hybridity.
Selected exhibitions include The Pleasure Pavilion: A Series of Installations, Luhring Augustine Bushwick, Brooklyn (2021); How Will I Know, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2020-2021); Art on the Grid: 50 Artists’ Reflections on the Pandemic, Public Art Fund, various locations, New York (2020); Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2020); Form & Figure: Bodies of Art, Grosvenor Gallery, London (2020); Relations: Diaspora and Painting, PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art, Montréal (2020); Xenia: Crossroads in Portrait Painting, Marianne Boesky, New York (2020); I Know a Place, Nature Morte Gallery, New Delhi (2019); New Paintings, O Art Space, Lahore (2019); Time After Time, Aicon Gallery, New York (2018); Are You Here?, Lahore Biennale 2018 (2018); Short Stories, Canvas Gallery, Karachi (2017); Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi (2016); Salman Toor: Drawings from “The Electrician”, Honey Ramka, New York (2015); and Resident Alien, Aicon Gallery, New York (2015).
Awards include the Painters and Sculptors Grant, Joan Mitchell Foundation, New York (2019).
