Three Friends 2018

Salman Toor painted these ‘Three Friends’ with oil on canvas, in a way that feels really familiar to me. There is an immediacy and directness in the brushwork, see how the paint application is both transparent and opaque, and it gives the scene a kind of flickering, fleeting quality. There is a vulnerability to this painting. The artist isn't trying to hide the process. Look at the way the colors interact, how the reds and greens vibrate against the neutral grey. The scene is like a stage set, the players caught in a tableau. The guy on the floor with his phone is so contemporary, yet the handling of the paint feels old master-ish, like a fever dream remix of a Watteau painting. I feel that Toor's project shares something with painters like Pierre Bonnard, who found the extraordinary in ordinary, everyday moments.