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Writer's pictureEmma Straus

No Ordinary Love: An Exhibit that is Far from Ordinary

Love in ordinary places, and ordinary places that become extraordinary.


That is the idea behind artist Salman Toor’s “No Ordinary Love”. The exhibit boasts more than 45 paintings as well as a selection of Toor’s sketchbook drawings that blend historical motifs, echo the impressionist works of Monet and Van Gogh, and simultaneously take on a modern feel.


Toor’s works invert historical traditions in art and feature queer and POC individuals as a way to explore outdated concepts of power and the way in which it is presented through art.

Toor was born in Pakistan, and his works are a mesh of his religious upbringing as well as his sexuality. Toor looks to give representation to individuals that are otherwise missing from historical art canon. “No Ordinary Love” is a vibrant proclamation of love depicted in various ways.


Toor said, “I like these… bodies of color inhabiting familiar, bourgeois, urban, interior spaces… Sometimes they can look like lifestyle images. They are also fantasies about myself and my community.”


The collection shines with vibrant color through scenes of nighttime taxi rides shared with friends, the sometimes isolating family gatherings, and painted night scenes that create a world that the viewer could almost walk into.


Toor utilizes color intentionally. The vibrant and saturated colors are used to convey emotion. The color green appears throughout his works, and as explained in the exhibit, Toor works with green for its “nocturnal” and alluring quality.


The nature of Toor’s paintings capture seemingly ordinary spaces and relatable social situations that one may find theirself in.


For instance, In Toor’s painting, The Latecomer, pictured below, there is a simple yet meaningful scene that unfolds.


A lone young man walks toward the middle of a bar while the other patrons stand clustered and preoccupied. The protagonist, dressed in white, is cast in stark relief against the rich and glossy emerald and sea greens of the room, as if he appeared in this homogeneously-hued world by some twist of fate.


Is standing in contrast with the world around him dreamlike or dangerous? At the moment, just one figure in the bar seems to notice “the latecomer”, a man in the foreground offering a stare.



Many of his other paintings follow a similar formula. There are scenes where the protagonist is placed in these settings and highlighted by the use of Toor’s color as a way to isolate and detach the subject from the rest of the scene. For Toor, the message was his own feeling of isolation and yet finding his own place in these settings.


In the past year, Toor is only one of the contemporary artists that the Baltimore Museum of Art has featured. The BMA invites contemporary artists to reinterpret the historical works that are held within its walls. The museum itself has a curated collection of works that span from ancient Egypt and other ancient civilizations, to the Renaissance, the Impressionist movement, to more contemporary pieces today.


The inclusion of a variety of works aligns with the museum’s mission statement, which says:“This belief is that art is at the heart of the BMA…with a commitment to artistic excellence andsocial equity in every decision from art presentation, interpretation, and collecting… creating amuseum welcoming to all.”



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