{"id":117797,"date":"2025-11-06T02:24:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T02:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/117797\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T02:24:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T02:24:12","slug":"ali-banisadrs-mesmerizing-paintings-make-sense-of-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/117797\/","title":{"rendered":"Ali Banisadr\u2019s Mesmerizing Paintings Make Sense of Chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Art<\/p>\n

\"\"\"Ali<\/p>\n

Portrait of Ali Banisadr. Photo by Charlie Rubin. Courtesy of Olney Gleason.<\/p>\n

Ali Banisadr<\/a>\u2019s childhood in Tehran was marked by violence. At the start of the Iran-Iraq War, which broke out in 1980, he was only four years old. \u201cAs a child, I was trying to understand this chaos,\u201d he told me during a recent visit to his studio in Brooklyn. \u201cThe most abstract thing to make sense of for me was living in Iran during the war.\u201d<\/p>\n

That sensory overload became the foundation of his visual language, informed in large part by the artist\u2019s synesthesia. Making art, he told me, was a way to impose order on disorder\u2014to \u201cmake sense out of the sounds,\u201d he explained. Four decades later, Banisadr, now 49, lives in New York, where he continues to try to understand the world through his hyperactive compositions. Layers of rough, energetic brushstrokes collide with flashes of color that hum against each other, evoking a similar dissonance to what he experienced as a child. His canvases are visually overwhelming yet remain governed by some internal logic, like a piece of music. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Ali Banisadr, installation view of \u201cNoble\/Savage\u201d at Olney Gleason, 2025. Photo by Charlie Rubin. Courtesy of Olney Gleason.<\/p>\n

This push-pull relationship between order and chaos lies at the center of \u201cNoble\/Savage<\/a>,\u201d Banisadr\u2019s solo show inaugurating New York\u2019s Olney Gleason<\/a> gallery (previously known as Kasmin). The show brings together the Iranian American artist\u2019s newest paintings and a suite of bronze sculptures, his first in this medium. This body of work extends Banisadr\u2019s lifelong pursuit of making sense of confusing, often contradictory human experiences. <\/p>\n

In 1988, his family relocated from Tehran to San Francisco, where he started making graffiti among a community of artists. There, he was inspired by other artists using the medium to create sociopolitical critique. For example, in our interview, Banisadr name-checked Barry McGee<\/a>, who \u201cwas making commentary about things that you were seeing in San Francisco,\u201d referring to the gentrification of the city over the years.<\/p>\n

\"Ali<\/p>\n

Over time, though, he felt pulled toward a more solitary studio practice. \u201cI wanted to work out of my imagination; I needed to go to school to understand how to do it right,\u201d he said. That impulse led him to New York in 2005, where he studied at the School of Visual Arts and the New York Academy of Art.<\/p>\n

When I visited Banisadr in his studio, two long tables were piled with open books. One table, he explained, is his \u201cvisual collage,\u201d where images accumulate as he works; the other is his \u201cresearch table,\u201d covered in philosophical notes and essays. \u201cI\u2019m throwing a sort of net in the ocean,\u201d he said, \u201ctrying to catch all these different things that come out.\u201d Pages are flipped open to show everything from Francisco de Goya<\/a>\u2019s Saturn Devouring His Son<\/a> (1819\u201323) to Pablo Picasso<\/a>\u2019s Guernica<\/a> (1937). These selections inspired one of the largest paintings in the show, Leviathan (2025), where priest, angel, and king figures are enveloped in a tempest of purple, white, and blue brushstrokes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Ali Banisadr, Leviathan, 2025. Photo by Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of Olney Gleason.<\/p>\n

Intense gestures, resembling violent storms, have typically characterized Banisadr\u2019s paintings. Now, some of the paintings in \u201cNoble\/Savage\u201d feature more serene, calmer scenes inspired by forested landscapes. He and his family recently purchased a place in the Hudson Valley. Last April, the artist temporarily relocated there, setting up a small studio with views of the forests. The shift changed his palette and rhythm. \u201cYou just start to understand how nature works by being a witness to it,\u201d he explained. The forest\u2019s shifting light and layered greens shaped six of the canvases. One of these works is Blood Meridian (2025), a layered woodland scene rendered in loose, gestural brushstrokes that evoke dappled light and atmosphere. \u201cThere\u2019s something about getting your hands dirty, being part of nature on a daily basis,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s changed the way I see.\u201d<\/p>\n

The artwork\u2019s title is pulled from another book. Banisadr recently read and reread Cormac McCarthy\u2019s Blood Meridian (1985), where a runaway kid gets involved with scalp hunters. Though set in the 1850s, the novel\u2019s \u201cmood of violence,\u201d as Banisadr put it, also aligns with our \u201csurreal, crazy news cycle.\u201d Inspired by the newfound serenity of his upstate getaway, Banisadr began to think about the duality in life, once again attempting to find balance amid chaos.<\/p>\n

\"Ali\"\"<\/p>\n

Ali Banisadr, Blood Meridian, 2025. Photo by Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of Olney Gleason.<\/p>\n

For his exhibition at Olney Gleason, Banisadr borrowed a structural cue from McCarthy. In Blood Meridian, each chapter begins with a string of fragmentary phrases that build rhythm before the story starts; Banisadr added a subtle nod to the book by arranging his painting titles\u2014Paradise Lost<\/a>, Pandemonium of the Sun<\/a>, The Parting, Omen (all 2025)\u2014near the front desk of the gallery so they read like a single poetic line.<\/p>\n

Banisadr carries his interest in dualities into his new bronze sculptures. Anima and Animus<\/a> (both 2025) are 4-foot sentinels \u201cguarding the whole show,\u201d their slender, branch-like forms rising from dark bases that appear charred. These two titles come from psychologist Carl Jung\u2019s archetypes of anima and animus, the feminine and masculine forces that together make a whole.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"Ali<\/p>\n

Ali Banisadr, Gilgamesh, 2025. Photo by Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of Olney Gleason.<\/p>\n

The title of the show, \u201cNoble\/Savage,\u201d he said, \u201cis not really a singular idea\u2026it\u2019s a battlefield of ideas.\u201d In Western art, nature is often depicted as pure and civilization as corrupt; Banisadr is interested in unifying the polarity, showing how the two are inextricably bound. To do so, he draws on his extensive knowledge of mythology. For instance, his Gilgamesh (2025), a 1.5-foot-tall bronze statue, gives form to the Mesopotamian tale of Gilgamesh and Enkidu\u2014the king and the wild man\u2014who begin as opposites but come to mirror one another. This story reflects Banisadr\u2019s belief that order and chaos must meet to create one living thing. \u201cYou need the duality,\u201d he emphasized.<\/p>\n

This contrast is the focus of Banisadr\u2019s \u201cNoble\/Savage.\u201d City and forest, chaos and order: neither cancels the other. The balance between them is what keeps his artwork\u2014and his imagination\u2014alive.<\/p>\n

MR<\/p>\n

\"MR\"<\/p>\n

Maxwell Rabb<\/p>\n

Maxwell Rabb (Max) is a writer. Before joining Artsy in October 2023, he obtained an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from the University of Georgia. Outside of Artsy, his bylines include the Washington Post, i-D, and the Chicago Reader. He lives in New York City, by way of Atlanta, New Orleans, and Chicago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Art Portrait of Ali Banisadr. Photo by Charlie Rubin. Courtesy of Olney Gleason. Ali Banisadr\u2019s childhood in Tehran…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[19359,437,434,435,436,438,146,85,46,22410],"class_list":{"0":"post-117797","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-artist-profiles","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-il","16":"tag-israel","17":"tag-maxwell-rabb"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}