Ali Banisadr and the art of ‘visual thinking’
The first solo museum exhibition in the US for Iranian-American artist Ali Banisadr is called MATRIX 185, and it is now on display at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. October 22, 2020 marked the opening of the show, which will remain open until February 14, 2021.
In addition to a video collage that Banisadr made to display more pieces from the museum’s collection, the artist has selected ten paintings and two prints from the Wadsworth collection. His exposure to pop culture, graphic novels, movies, pop culture, and European painting influenced the visual and narrative content of his works. He said, “I paint the sights and sounds of war,” to The Met.
Born in Tehran in 1976, Banisadr immigrated to the US at the age of twelve in the midst of the Iran-Iraq War (1980– 1988). After relocating to New York in 2000, he attended the School of Visual Arts to obtain his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and then the New York Academy of Art to obtain his Master’s degree.
He is a 44-year-old American artist who is highly successful and promising. Major museums all over the world, such as the British Museum in London, the Center Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, have collected his works.
Oil on linen, 66 x 88 inches, The Caravan (2020) (Courtesy of the Artist and Kasmin Gallery)
The paintings by Banisadr are multifaceted, conceptually captivating, and visually stunning. They beckon the observer to enter a made-up universe filled with both known and unknown components that combine to produce a maze of shape, color, and meaning. Although he stands alone in many aspects due to his intensity, symbolic language, locations, and characters as well as the cryptic and coded universe he creates, his paintings may also evoke memories of giants like as Pieter Bruegel, Hieronymus Bosch, and Francisco Goya. He skillfully blends chaos and melody to keep the audience outside the door and encourage individual interpretation.
