Ali Banisadr

Biography

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The Messenger, 2021

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Born in Tehran, Iran, 1976
Lives & Works in Brooklyn, New York

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"The impact of the work is immediate and intense, seductive but confounding, drawing the viewer into a remarkable space of the imagination filled with profuse details, painterly pyro-technics, and otherworldly inhabitants whose goings on seem to invite our recognition and understanding yet remain entirely inscrutable." —Joe Lin-Hill
Portrait by Diego Flores.

Ali Banisadr’s densely populated paintings are influenced by the artist’s perception of sound as inextricably linked to color and form. Drawing on childhood experiences of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) in his native Tehran, where explosions and other aural disturbances were commonplace, as well as his extant synesthesia, Banisadr painstakingly and intuitively builds complex compositions that exude a vitality at once turbulent and celebratory.

Banisadr draws freely from an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of painting to create a distinctive visual language. Whilst his gestural brushstrokes recall the unbridled energy of de Kooning’s Abstract Expressionism, the work’s intensity of mood and dreamlike detail evoke mid-twentieth-century Surrealism in the vein of Francis Bacon. Much like the Old Masters Bruegel and Bosch, who Banisadr cites as influences, the artist’s work conceives of a concurrent, existentially absurd flurry of activity as seen from above. As the lower portions of the picture planes brim with carnivalesque energy, the upper halves achieve balance in their calming sense of distance, functioning like the flattened, scenic backdrop of a theater stage. Banisadr’s oscillating use of cool and warm tones works to denote either landscape or flesh, though the abstracted forms, fading in and out of focus like figures from a dream, resist total comprehension.

In 1988, Banisadr left Iran with his family at the age of twelve, first reaching Turkey and then San Diego, California. While living in San Francisco, he became involved with the local graffiti art community while studying psychology. He later moved to New York City where he earned a BFA at the School of Visual Arts (2005) and an MFA at the New York Academy of Art (2007), and he continues to live and work in Brooklyn, NY. His first major monograph was published by Rizzoli Electa in 2021, with an introduction by Negar Azimi and contributions by Robert Hobbs, Joe Lin-Hill, and John Yau.
In 2021, a solo exhibition of the artist’s works was installed in dialogue with the permanent collection of the Museo Stefano Bardini in Florence, Italy; Banisadr was also invited to create a group of site-specific paintings for the exhibition, inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy and installed in the nearby Palazzo Vecchio. Other solo exhibitions have been staged at the Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece (2020); the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT (2020); Gemäldegalerie, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria (2019); and Het Noordbrabants Museum, Den Bosch, Netherlands (2019). His work has also been included in significant group exhibitions, including at the Heydar Aliyev Center, Baku, Azerbaijan and the Venice Biennale (2013-14) and Prague Biennale 6 (2013).

Banisadr’s work is included in significant public collections worldwide, including the Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece; the British Museum, London; the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, NY; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Het Noordbrabants Museum, Den Bosch, Netherlands; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum der Moderne, Salzburg; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, among others.
Works
- He Who Saw the Deep, 2021
  
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- The Messenger, 2021
  
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- Only Breath, 2020
  
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- Red, 2020
  
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- The Caravan, 2020
  
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- The Healers, 2020
  
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- The Prophet, 2020
  
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- Sigil, 2019
  
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Exhibitions
- Ali Banisadr: These Specks of Dust
  May 6 – June 26, 2021 509 West 27th Street, New York
  
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- Ali Banisadr: Red
  Online May 20 – December 1, 2020
  Ali Banisadr’s latest painting, Red, embodies the existential force of the natural world and the artistic urge to reconcile chaos through the act of creation. Banisadr began the large-scale painting in late 2019 before stepping away from the work in January 2020. Despite its appearance of completion, Banisadr “had a sense that I needed to do more to it.” After the global pandemic struck and countries across the world went into lockdown, he says, “the work made sense to me in a new way.” Banisadr then revisited the painting with renewed dedication, finishing at the end of March 2020.
  
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News
Publications
- Ali Banisadr
  2021
  Hardcover, 344 pages
  Publisher: Rizzoli Electa
  ISBN: 0847870081
  Dimensions: 9.54 x 1.38 x 12.33 inches
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the Kasmin review

Storyboard

Ali Banisadr's The Messenger

Take a deep dive into Ali Banisadr's The Messenger with Storyboard, a new interactive digital feature that takes viewers on an immersive journey through a single work. This, the first iteration of the feature, reveals Banisadr's personal symbolism and the diverse art historical references informing this seminal painting.

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