Ali Banisadr: The Alchemist

Ali Banisadr: The Alchemist is the first major U.S. museum survey of the Brooklyn-based, Iranian-born artist Ali Banisadr. Organized by the Katonah Museum of Art (KMA), this exhibition encompasses nearly twenty years of the artist’s singular practice, from 2006 to the present, across the mediums of painting, drawing, and printmaking. Sculpture, a new direction for the artist, will be presented for the first time.

Banisadr’s densely populated paintings are influenced by his experience of synesthesia, linking 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, Banisadr painstakingly and intuitively builds complex compositions that exude a vitality at once turbulent and celebratory.

The exhibition reveals Banisadr’s artistic practice as a careful balancing act between chaos and composure, and abstraction and representation. His images display a dazzling mastery of art history, philosophy, and world events, offering a nuanced perspective of human nature. The works are rich with figurative illusions rooted in autobiographical narratives, sonic recollection, invented stories, world history, collective memory, and mythology. Banisadr creates complex, turbulent worlds witha multitude of references from across art history—including Abstract Expressionism German Expressionism, Medieval Renaissance art, alchemical imagery, Mesopotamian antiquities, and Persian miniatures—as well as references to our own tempestuous times.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with critical essays by Dr. Gražina Subelytė, Associate Curator, Peggy Guggenheim Collection; Dr. Bill Sherman, Director, The Warburg Institute, University of London; and Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe, Director, Katonah Museum of Art. It will also feature a transcribed conversation with the artist and noted art historian Robert Storr, and a fully illustrated plate section.