Salman Toor’s solo exhibition, "Someone Like You," currently on view at London’s Courtauld Gallery, presents a compelling dialogue between contemporary queer life and the traditions of European Old Master painting. The show, running until January 10, 2027, marks the Pakistani-American artist’s first major solo presentation in Europe and features 19 oil paintings alongside 16 drawings created since 2019.

Born in Lahore in 1983 and now based in New York, Toor draws inspiration from 17th- and 18th-century European art, while infusing his works with autobiographical elements and a distinctly modern sensibility. Many pieces explore themes of identity, queerness, and the complexities of acceptance, framed within the intimate settings of bars, cabs, and domestic spaces. The exhibition notably places Toor’s work alongside Édouard Manet’s 1882 "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère," underscoring the artist’s engagement with art history.

In works such as “The Bar on East 13th” (2019), Toor recreates the social atmosphere of an urban New York bar, substituting Manet’s iconic barmaid with a goateed bartender donning nail polish and braids. The scene is layered with narrative tension—signaled by elements like a freshly cut lemon, a warning blade, and a reflected crowd illuminated by a smartphone—capturing the ambivalence between liberation and danger within queer spaces. The painting represents Toor’s personal “coming out” through his art, an act he acknowledges remains fraught in many parts of the world.

Toor’s palette often leans toward greens and ambers, colors reminiscent of nineteenth-century artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec, evoking moods that are simultaneously inviting and unsettling. His “Bar Boy” (2019) references Flemish and Italian tavern scenes with a contemporary twist, portraying its central figure bathed in the glow of a smartphone.

The exhibition also touches on broader social and political concerns. Paintings like “Man with Face Creams and Phone Plug” (2019) critique racial profiling and the post-9/11 surveillance state, inviting viewers to assume the role of an immigration official making fraught decisions. Other works evoke Toor’s childhood in Lahore, presenting tender moments of self-recognition against a backdrop of conservative family life.

Technological motifs frequently appear, as in the charcoal drawing “Phone Watcher” (2022), reflecting the intersection of digital culture and everyday experience. Meanwhile, Toor’s use of postmodern compositional techniques, such as combining Renaissance perspective with the all-encompassing narrative style of South Asian miniature painting, allows multiple storylines to unfold simultaneously, deepening the layers of meaning.

Embedded within humor and self-mockery, Toor’s works explore themes of camp and exhaustion, notably in “Fag Puddle with Carriers” (2026), an homage to Lorenzo Lotto’s "The Entombment" that resonates with contemporary grief as it responds to political violence in Gaza. This painting exemplifies Toor’s ability to blend personal, cultural, and historical references in a highly evocative visual language.

The exhibition, curated by Elena Crippa, situates Toor among a lineage of South Asian artists who have confronted questions of identity and representation, acknowledging influences such as Bhupen Khakhar and Sunil Gupta. Toor’s paintings offer an intimate yet expansive view of queer experience, reimagined through the lens of classical art to reflect the complexities of contemporary life.