ALI BANISADR Portrait of Ali Banisadr. Photo by Ali Khadra. , 2017, oil on linen, 167.5 × 223.5 cm. Courtesy the artist and Sperone Westwater, New York. New Westwater, and Sperone the artist × 223.5 cm. Courtesy oil on linen, 167.5 , 2017, , Mosaic People ALI BANISADR

Nightmares and Dreamscapes BY ANNA WALLACE-THOMPSON

76 | SEP/OCT 2017 | ISSUE 105 Profiles

One does not simply look at Ali Banisadr’s by a trip to Normandy Beach, and evokes Another new development is the paintings so much as one watches them, memories of exploding bombs from the definition of the characters in his paintings. waiting for a grand finale to unfold. When artist’s childhood. Alongside TS Eliot-like Previously, his figures were more abstracted, faced with these canvases, we become evocations of desolation is an explosion in and flit in front of our eyes like mirages, voyeurs, drawn to the operatic splendor of angry ocher tones, which swirls among sandy dissolving into brushstrokes upon closer some apocalyptic, perverse theater group beiges and grays. A tiny crater at the center inspection. “The figures began demanding unaware of our presence. Each of the artist’s of the image speaks volumes of Banisadr’s more, they wanted to be developed more,” paintings is a tableau, a set piece from ability to capture a sensation, feeling or said Banisadr. “One always wants to step into the end of days in which a grotesquery of sound in a few deft brushstrokes. an unknown visual territory that one hasn’t carnivalesque figures dredged up from In the ensuing years, Banisadr’s aesthetic been to before.” As such, the characters the depths of imagination, myth and hell, has become almost synonymous with that now bear more significance, evolving from shuffles along deep in conversation. Arcs of of Hieronymus Bosch due to his Garden being simply auxiliary details. Instead, we paint and blurred limbs give the impression of Earthly Delights-type panoramas are faced with a cast who take on roles in of constant motion, our eyes darting from characterized by earlier works such as the grand tradition of commedia dell’arte, place to place, never resting, always seeking. Fishing for Souls (2009), an aquamarine or even Iranian taziyeh plays. Banisadr This intensity has come to characterize riverside scene in which myriad small explained: “In theater, or opera, you are Banisadr’s oeuvre, as has a plush color palette figures appear as if bathed in heavenly light. presented with figures in costume and coupled with melting, blurred brushstrokes. In these paintings, his figures take on the automatically you know that this one is the Each work is evidence of the artist’s magpie- appearance of bizarre beasts, as if they had authority figure, that one is the jester, and so like accruing and parsing of current and stepped out of the pages of Borges or were on. I like the duality between looking at the historical events, influences and stimuli, as dreamed up by a demented puppet designer. ‘real’ figure and their costumed ‘role.’ I’ve well as the result of his synesthesia condition, This (somewhat gleeful) apocalyptic always liked not knowing which is which.” in which sounds and colors collide, slip sensibility is important to the artist. “I Additionally, he noted, artists often play and smash into each other. “I feel like I’m a always want to create something that has the role of the jester—the one figure who, bowerbird,” admitted Banisadr. “I take from never existed before,” said Banisadr. “I don’t through comic refrain, is able to express so many different places, be it art history, want my figures to be instantly recognizable; uncomfortable truths. This role of artist paintings, etchings, films, literature or I want them to be something that I gave as jokester is particularly relevant given everyday life, when I’m walking down the birth to, even if they have roots in historical Banisadr’s inclusion in the recent major street and see a specific color that just clicks. mythological sources. I want them to be group show, “Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Past, present, future—you digest everything hybrids of our imaginations.” Contemporary Persians,” which ran at the around you, and then it becomes your own There have been two major shifts in Aga Khan Museum in Toronto this year and personal vocabulary.” Banisadr’s practice recently: the first is the examined themes of social and political Born in Iran in 1976, Banisadr and his introduction of a monochromatic palette, upheaval in the various identities of Iran. family were prompted to uproot and move which lends to his new work a sense of Banisadr has also begun to enlarge the to Turkey, and then California, after the first narrative focus. An example of this is the size of the characters, making them harder Gulf War. The artist spent his teens and early gigantic two-by-three-meter painting, Trust to ignore. An example of this is in Mosaic twenties on the West Coast before moving to in the Future (2017), which was painted People (2017), where characters congregate New York in 2000, where he still resides. It entirely in variations of indigo to emulate and move toward the viewer, as if bursting was here that he received his BFA from the the powdery crunch of snow and the icy out of the painting. “Usually my figures are School of Visual Arts, followed by an MFA blasts of arctic winds in a frost-filled miasma in dialogue with each other, in their own from the New York Academy of Art. Nearly of sharp flurries. In contrast, We Work in world. But these people are referencing two decades after arriving in the United Shadows (2017) presents a nightmarish the refugee crisis and here they are leaving States, there is little of the Middle East left cluster of figures presided over by an their land,” said Banisadr of the painting. in his accent, except for when we discussed ominous rust-hued cloud reminiscent of This work is also significant for its use of Iranian theater and the soft, singsong tones spears and violence. When viewed together, fragmentation—despite the greater emphasis of Farsi come through. as they were in a recent Sperone Westwater on the final silhouette, the figures possess a As an Iranian living in New York, show in New York, the canvases seem to quality of blurry pixilation, a nod to erosion especially now, one could peg Banisadr’s mirror Robert Frost’s poem Fire and Ice, an of identity as borders shift and discourse is practice as one that responds to politics. intentional comparison on the artist’s part. “I pushed around new, and even future, states Although the work is political—the artist wanted to paint an underworld, and I wanted of globalization and nationalism. admitted he “hadn’t realized how political to create something that was the opposite For an artist whose work has for a long [his] works had become”—Banisadr veers of snow and ice and cold, something fiery, time drawn on the rich tapestry of art history, away from specific events and statements, deep within the earth,” said Banisadr. “I had this new focus on the future is an intriguing preferring instead to symphonize myriad Dante on my mind, and these levels of hell one. “I am questioning the idea of progress,” threads and stories, focusing on the human he travels through. This is like our psyche: he says. “Are we headed toward technological condition and the wheels of history. Early we dig within ourselves, and this to me was a paradise or ecological disaster? Have we traces of this approach are evident in a work metaphor for my paintings. I dig deep within really come as far as we think?” It’s certainly created in the year he graduated, The Waste my imagination to bring out these things that a heavy question, and perhaps one that Land (2006). The painting was inspired come to the world, our physical world.” these new, bolder figures, can answer.

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