Ali Banisadr b. 1976
"Ali Banisadr is emerging as one of the definitive voices of his generation. His visionary practice aligns the personal and the collective to acutely and poetically decipher our tempestuous era."—Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe
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.
MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS & COLLECTIONS
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.
