Ali Banisadr: The Alchemist
March 16 - June 29, 2025- coming soon:
- Ali Banisadr: The Alchemist
- The Artist’s Laboratory
Ali Banisadr: The Alchemist is the first major U.S. museum survey of the contemporary 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.
Exhibition Images
Exhibition Support
The exhibition and publication are made possible with support from the Katherine C. and David E. Moore Exhibition Fund and The Director’s Circle of the Katonah Museum of Art: Paul Bird and Amy Parsons, Mike Davies, Isabelle Harnoncourt Feigen, Virginia L. Gold, Kirsti Kroener and Nicholas Kronfeld, Linda Nordberg, Yvonne S. Pollack, Rebecca Samberg, and Richard and Audrey Zinman. Additional support has been provided by the Berger Family Foundation, Tara and Jeffrey Coniaris, Padi and Jason Nazmiyal, Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, and the Ali Banisadr Exhibition Leadership Committee. In-kind support has been generously provided by Kasmin; Victoria Miro; Perrotin; Cristea Roberts Gallery, London; and Thaddaeus Ropac gallery.
The Katonah Museum of Art is proud to be a grantee of ArtsWestchester with funding made possible by Westchester County government with the support of County Executive George Latimer and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
