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(slow music)

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(phone dialer)

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[Salman Toor, Artist]

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(slow music)

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["Salman Toor's Emerald Green"]

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(phone rings)

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- Hello.

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[Father over phone]
-Hello, how are you son?

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[Toor]
-All is well!

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-What's going on with you?

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I think I told you about this,

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this small painting is going to a museum.

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It's going to be hung next
to historical paintings

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from seventeenth-century Holland.

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It's called the Frick museum.

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To me, it is probably the best thing

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that's ever going to
happen, ever. (laughs)

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So completely unimaginable,

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like a couple of years ago.

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So I'm just really excited.

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(slow music)

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Most of these paintings
are based on memory

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or the fantasy of memory
of having grown up

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in a kind of conservative place.

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[Lahore, Pakistan, 1990]

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(children singing)

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Growing up as fem boy in a
mostly homophobic culture,

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it's exciting to put that next to

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these pictures of ultra freedom.

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(slow music)

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In fact, it's kind of
like annoyingly free.

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I'm focusing on
the idea that the freedoms

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that we all to take for granted here

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is pretty vulnerable.

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(slow music)

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So in 2002, when I moved here,

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it was a complete
transformation in my life

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because I had never been
to the States before.

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I went straight to a college town.

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To me, it was magical because
everybody had long hair.

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It was okay to be gay.

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I was getting into European art history

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for the first time.

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(papers scratching)

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It was an important painting to me

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and I haven't looked
at it for a long time.

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So it's really,
sort of, refined--

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just really gay. (laughs)

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Which is great

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but like, you know,

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in retrospect I would probably
not have the cock in there.

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It's like so gratuitous and
it doesn't even have a shadow.

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(people laughing)

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[Man, off-screen]
- It doesn't have a shadow.

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[Toor]
- Yeah it doesn't have a shadow.

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(upbeat music)

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I did a painting in 2019.

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I had thought about it

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and I knew what I was going to do

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it was going to be like
this nocturnal, late-night

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apartment scene with these
three guys having a cool time.

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(upbeat music)

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It was green and I was
just so pleased with it.

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(upbeat music)

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There's something glamorous
about emerald green

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and something nocturnal, inviting.

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(upbeat music)

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I wanted to just explore
that color for a while.

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(upbeat music)

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This particular thing that I do,

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I think of them as "fag puddles."

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They're sort of heaps of objects

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and tubular body parts.

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These body parts also have like,

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just balls and just feet and it's hairy

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and it's just all over the place.

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I wanted to go into
that surreal space

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when I was going to show it
in the Vermeer room at the Frick

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because it's sort of fabulous,
but also pathetic.

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So I just wanted to use things

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that in my imagination
are personal symbols--

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a kind of installation of made-up busts

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that look vaguely Buddhist or European.

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So, you know, these drawings are really

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just about mapping out a composition.

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(piano music)

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(subway passing)

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(piano music)

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The paintings are peppered with

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nightmarish scenarios that
are based on anxieties

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(piano music)

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and the kind of movement between

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being an empowered new
person in the city, but also,

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moments of disempowerment

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and maybe even humiliation. (laughs)

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Your work, I just love
the confidence in it.

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It's just, it's so flowy

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[Doron Langberg, artist]

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when you use the rainbow as an emblem.

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when you use the rainbow as an emblem.
["Salman" by Doron Langberg]

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[Doron Langberg]
- When you painted me, I feel you captured

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something so specific.

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[Toor]
The paintings are a reflection

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of most of the conversations
I have with my friends.

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Queer friendships about young, fem guys

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involved or ensconced
in cosmopolitan culture.

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(upbeat music)

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- And then this is the other one.

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[Visitor]
- And there's also a drawing, correct?

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[Toor]
- Yes, the drawing is here.

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(car engine roaring)

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(footsteps)

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Both of us love the stuff in here.

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We look at a lot of it,

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a lot of our inspiration comes
from these historical works.

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It's a really surreal thing
to be a part of something

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that can seem like a bit of
an ivory tower sometimes.

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(slow music)

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[Langberg]
This is what we were looking at,

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like, all of our lives.

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Thinking of them as just
a continuous language

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and history,

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and having that in direct conversation

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is something that
I didn't necessarily think would happen.

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(laughing)

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[Toor]
Being from a post-colonial country

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where the encounter with Europe changed

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and transformed
that region.

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It's kind of like coming back
full circle, in a sense.

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And it feels really, really
important and poetic.

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(upbeat music)