“I can see the world from all these different perspectives.”
We visited Iranian-American painter Ali Banisadr in his Brooklyn studio and entered a world with many worlds inside.
“I was always interested in how things exist in memory. They are always moving and shifting, and they’re ungraspable sometimes, like the clouds.”
Banisadr draws freely from a comprehensive knowledge of the history of painting to create a distinctive visual language. His gestural brushstrokes recall the unbridled energy of de Kooning’s Abstract Expressionism, while the work’s intensity of mood and dreamlike detail evoke mid-twentieth-century Surrealism in the vein of Francis Bacon.
“Making art was making me feel safe because I feel like it was a world that had control over.”
“New York, in some ways, reflects the way I am. It’s a place where you have many people from many places; there are many dimensions to it. It feels more home than any other home I’ve ever had.”
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. The personal and artistic narratives across the artist’s work are distilled through a dazzling mastery of art history, philosophy, and world events, offering a nuanced perspective of human nature. His expansive paintings are rich with figurative allusions rooted in autobiographical narratives, sonic recollections, invented stories, world history, collective memory, and mythology. Banisadr creates complex, turbulent worlds whose syncopated rhythms corral a multitude of references from across art history – including Abstract Expressionism, Renaissance and Medieval art, alchemical imagery, Mesopotamian antiquities, and Persian miniatures—as well as references to our own tempestuous times.
“I always ask myself: What can art do when there’s chaos and madness happening? What is its role? I don’t know, but when I think about the Guernica painting, for example, I always think what did Picasso say about Guernica? I’m not sure. But we have Guernica, the painting, which keeps reminding us of this universal human suffering.”
Ali Banisadr was born in 1976 in Tehran, Iran. In 1988, Banisadr left Iran with his family and went to California with his family at the age of twelve. 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 2025, Banisadr will have his first major survey in the US at the Katonah Museum of Art in NY. 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, the Venice Biennale (2013-14) and Prague Biennale 6 (2013).
Banisadr’s work is included in significant public collections worldwide, among others 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.
Ali Banisadr was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in his studio in Brooklyn, New York, in March 2024.
Camera: Sean Hanley
Edited by: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2024
Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond, Ny Carlsbergfondet and C.L. Davids Fond og Samling.
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