Published to accompany Salman Toor’s first solo museum exhibition in Europe, at the Courtauld Gallery, London, this handsome publication offers new insight into the artist’s iconic, thought-provoking and often humorous paintings. Exploring human interactions, as well as the desire and struggle to experience a sense of belonging, Salman Toor: Someone Like You sheds fresh light on Toor’s work, addressing his manifold references and illuminating the crucial role that drawing plays in his practice as a painter.
 
Salman Toor is well-known for his vibrant paintings that represent people in shared moments of friendship and love, as well as experiencing solitude and alienation. The characters that populate Toor’s painting are fictional but rooted in personal experiences and memories. Toor says that his paintings ‘depict queer and immigrant lives that straddle different cultures and inhabit the tension between intimacy and exposure, belonging and estrangement. What it means to find a community, but also the daily costs associated with visibility.’
 
Born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1983, Toor trained in the United States. He currently lives and works in New York. He has had major exhibitions internationally, including his acclaimed first institutional solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2020–21). More recently, he participated in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2024). The Courtauld’s exhibition will be Toor’s first solo museum show in Europe.