The Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA) opens Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love, the first museum solo exhibition by the artist in the Pacific region. The exhibition features 45 works showcasing Toor’s talented approach to painting and drawing.

Taking inspiration from European, American and South Asian artistic traditions, Toor weaves together contemporary scenes that confuse class, culture and individuality to tell personal stories centering on Brown, queer characters. “I see my work as part of a larger project of subcultured voices who update and challenge notions of identity in Western art history,” said Toor. “My practice explores both hope and anxieties related to the queer experience from an international viewpoint.”

Toor’s paintings evoke a sense of tenderness as they deal with complex themes such as immigration, race and sexuality. Throughout, Toor keeps a lightness, and sometimes adds a layer of absurdity, to the artwork. Often working in a signature palette of rich emerald greens, his paintings are infused with a nocturnal note of bohemian dreaminess. The atmospheric tones offer additional layers of meaning, whether portraying comfort, isolation, celebration or uneasiness.

Toor often depicts scenes of fleeting intimacy, offering the viewer a window into private moments of vulnerability and desire. Visitors will witness a secret encounter in Back Lawn (2021), an intimate view of an emotional figure in Crying Boy with Candle (2021) and a young man exploring what might be his mother’s makeup in The Women (2021).

No Ordinary Love is part of a larger theme at HoMA centered around the idea of shifting perspectives. Over the course of the next year, the Museum will present exhibitions, installations and programs that have the narrative-flipping power to change the way visitors see, think and feel, revealing personal and societal evolutions.

“The pandemic disruption has shifted HoMA’s own perspective, putting it on a more experimental, community-oriented path culminating in the curatorial focus of shifting perspectives,” said Catherine Whitney, HoMA’s director of curatorial affairs. “Through this ambitious year of dynamic programming, HoMA is on a journey of transformation as we rethink the role of the 21st-century museum.”

Salman Toor was born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1983 and currently lives and works in New York. He studied painting and drawing at Ohio Wesleyan University and received his Master of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Salman Toor: How Will I Know, the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition, was recently presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2020-21). Toor is represented by Luhring Augustine, New York.

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