PRESS RELEASE


ALI BANISADR
PAINTINGS

October 30 – December 20, 2008

Ali Banisadr’s first one-person exhibition features paintings in oil on canvas created during the past year. With lush applications of brilliant color, rendered in a semi-abstract style, they combine stylistic idioms from the history of western art with references to Persian miniature painting. Underlying the seductive beauty of Banisadr’s richly interwoven imagery is the apocalyptic nature of his subject matter. In these works, memory and history collide, inspired by his childhood recollections of the Iran-Iraq War.

Ali Banisadr was born in Tehran in 1976. At the age of twelve his family left Iran, living briefly in Turkey before emigrating to California. As a teenager living in San Francisco, Banisadr was part of a well-known group of graffiti artists. After briefly studying psychology, he left the Bay Area to attend art school in New York, receiving a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2005 and his MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2007. He continues to live and work in New York.

About two years ago Banisadr began to explore his vivid memories of the bombings that had regularly occurred throughout his childhood. Recalling the vibrations and shattering glass led him to the idea of translating sounds into images. At the same time, he researched the history of conspiracies and conflict in the Middle East dating back to ancient times.

Two paintings in the exhibition incorporate the legends of Alamut, a remote mountain fortress in medieval Persia and the Hashashins, a warrior sect that occupied the fortress. The Hashashins were falsely alleged to have been killers, motivated by religious and political ideologies, who recruited converts by drugging young men and bringing them to a beautiful garden at Alamut. There they were supplied with wine and virgins and made to believe that they were in Paradise.

For Banisadr, painting is a way to reconcile what he knows with how he feels. In the catalogue that accompanies the exhibition
he says,

When I think about the history of war, these images mix together. Half are abstract and half have recognizable forms. They are always moving with sounds … I want the viewers of my paintings to see history and human behavior at a macro level, by combining a great variety of influences that you can see close-up. Bosch, Brueghel, Persian miniatures, memories, literature, history – I want to combine all of these things in my work. When you put all of this in the pot and stir, you create your own mythology.

Paintings by Ali Banisadr will be featured in the exhibition Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East at the Saatchi Gallery in London, opening in February of 2009.

The gallery is located at 535 West 22nd Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, on the sixth floor. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.