Salman Toor's 'Wish Maker' Spans Two Venues in New York

Salman Toor's first major New York exhibition since his 2020 Whitney debut, 'Wish Maker', is on view at Luhring Augustine's Chelsea and Tribeca spaces through June 21. The show presents 19 paintings in Chelsea and 44 works on paper in Tribeca, featuring queer men of color in nostalgic and speculative genre scenes. Toor employs monochrome palettes, predominantly green since 2019, with some works in yellow, coral, or violet. His green tint, which he compared to 'night vision' in a BOMB interview, suggests surveillant, technologically mediated sight. Works on paper, mostly greyscale, emphasize line over volume, resembling X-rays. Recurring images include 'Three Kissers' (2024) and 'Oh Father' (2024), the latter referencing Juan Rodríguez Juárez's 'Spaniard and Indian Produce a Mestizo' (c. 1715). Toor incorporates deliberate pentimenti, such as a ghost foot in 'The Scroller' (2024), preserving unrealized ideas for future consideration, echoing José Esteban Muñoz's notion of queerness as distilled from the past to imagine a future.