"Salman Toor: Another Green World" by Ted Stansfield

On the fourth floor of a recently renovated building in Brooklyn, sunlight pours through the windows of a spacious studio, bathing the works that cover its walls in a warm, golden glow. Arranged salon-style, these walls recall the crowded exhibitions of the 19th century, while a powerful AC unit whirs noisily in the background, shielding us from the furnace-like July heat. The paintings and drawings depict scenes from the everyday lives of young, queer South Asian men in New York: at home on the sofa, in the shower, at the club, in the back of a cab on the way there, hooking up, hanging out, and mindlessly scrolling on their phones while lounging in bed in their underwear. Yet these quotidian scenes are rendered with the beauty and grandeur of the great works of art history. They alchemise the carnality of Goya, the domesticity of the Dutch, the chromatic flair of the Venetians and Mughals, the caricatural wit of Hogarth and Daumier, the flamboyance of Baroque and Rococo dress, the elevation of the everyday in Realism and Impressionism, and the American portraitists’ devotion to giving ordinary lives their due.

The artist behind these works, Salman Toor, sits behind a table wrapped in brown paper, beside shelves teeming with art-history books. He is a fervent student of those teachers whose influence runs through his work. Yet dressed in a black T-shirt, black technical trousers and black gothic boots, Toor is hardly the picture of a traditionalist. At 43, he is one of the most celebrated painters of modern life, often mentioned in the same breath as Kerry James Marshall and Nicole Eisenman. And yet his path to the liberal and artistic haven of Brooklyn was a long one. Born in Lahore, Pakistan, he moved to the United States to study for a BFA at Ohio Wesleyan University, graduating in 2006, before completing an MFA at Pratt Institute in 2009.

Read the full article at anothermag.com or in the Winter/ Spring 2027 issue.