Ali Banisadr, “My paintings are time machines.”
He was born in Tehran in 1976 but grew up in the United States: first in San Diego, where his family settled when he was 12 years old. Then he flew to New York where he opened his studio after studying art. Since then, the painter Ali Banisadr has been shining: rated Number 1 in the top 100 artists of 2011 in a list by Flash Art, his work has been exhibited from the Metropolitan to the British Museum. His sixth exhibition is on display at Thaddaeus Ropac. Ordered Disorders alludes to the representation of conflicts in art history, offering a reflection on the troubles which agitate the world.
What gave you the motivation to become an artist?
I was attracted to art at a very young age. It was for me fundamental and my paintings were an attempt to understand the world around me. I grew up in Iran, during the revolution and the eight years of war with Iraq. I experienced chaos and turmoil. At this age, I was trying to overcome these experiences, expressing them visually. Later, I realised that there was a deeper explanation for this war, a truer version than the one shown in the media. What interests me is what lies beyond history. This is where art comes in: it’s an alternative and personal way of showing the world.
What are you influenced by?
The pioneering artists fascinate me. Especially the way in which Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Brueghel, the Elder were able to create such singular words to express their observations. On the technical side, I admire the Venetians of the Renaissance, such as Tintoretto and Veronese, and the Spanish, like Velasquez and Goya. Picasso’s Guernica or the monsters that haunted, Surrealists like Max Ernest because of the war. They resonate with my past. Japanese prints and Persian miniatures have also inspired me.
Can you talk about your creative process?
When I start a painting the brushstrokes create sounds and vibrations. They are my roadmap. And throughout the production of a piece, this includes lines, shapes, colours, textures, like figures, which arise at a later stage. These sounds are like music notes: they are light or heavy, soft or sharp.
It is said that your work is about a “narrative art history” . . .
I have always been sceptical of the linear idea of art history that I was taught in school. A few years ago, we still apprehended it in a very simplistic way. The Western civilizations did not indeed include in the aesthetic canon any other history of art. Looking closer, you can see the influence of other cultures: oriental cultures on Renaissance painters, Japanese art on the Impressionists . . . in my paintings, I try to create worlds where different languages meet, creating their own language, in dialogue with all cultures.
In your paintings, behind the apparent beauty, there is also disorder, despair and horror . . .
Chopin’s works are said to be cannons buried in flowers. In my work, there are these hybrid figures that I represent, in the moment of metamorphosis, remaining faithful to the memory that I have of things, like in a dream, in constant evolution. They are a mixture of humans, gods, monsters, animals and relics, belonging to an ancient past or an unknown future. My paintings are time machines. And as on the rhizomatic internet, where we switch from one thing to another, from the past to the future, they reflect this way of moving in and out of time, in worlds without borders with a sense of freedom, of which I am also aware of the dark side. Because where does this information go? Perhaps everything is sent to a central system, a kind of god, who knows everything about these futuristic creatures. With the manipulation of genes, things could go wrong. Ali Banisadr, Ordered Disorders, Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, October 17 - November 16, 2019