Toor’s scenes possess a kind of solemnity or quietude that does not suggest equilibrium so much as tender regard. Toor’s protagonists, obvious stand-ins for the artist himself, at least at an earlier moment in his life, seem held in suspension between two worlds, Old and New, never entirely at home in either. But he also holds them at emotional arm’s length, as if these images were tempered by time, less observations than memories, and they begin to assume the lineaments of archetype, despite their depiction of technology à la mode.
(Many of the pictures have an overall green palette, appropriate, perhaps, for the nocturnal illumination of bars or apartment parties—although more readily suggesting fin de siècle gaslight—but also reminiscent of the discoloured varnish of old paintings hanging for generations in smoke-filled drawing rooms.)
on Salman Toor
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