Ali Banisadr: At Once

At Once is Ali Banisadr (b.1976, Tehran) first-ever solo show in the UK and includes a 7-metre long triptych, his largest work to date. It’s exhibition of oil paintings created over the last two years by the celebrated New York-based artist.

Oscillating between the abstract and the figurative, Banisadr’s paintings feature fantastical landscapes populated with grotesque hybrids in a perpetual state of frenzy. These characters – conflations of animal, god, machine and human –are deftly captured in whirling, exuberant brushstrokes. Frequently there is a sense of a heaven and earth; in the lower half, we witness temporal struggles, physical conflict and angst, while above the characters seem more at peace as if they have surrendered themselves to the ether.

For the artist, painting is evidently not just painting, but a means to reflect visually on his thoughts, memories and imagination. While intensely personal, it is a line of enquiry that allows him to chip away at artistic, political, cultural and religious shibboleths. It is significant that he invariably eschews the Western tradition of including a central focal point or protagonist. In doing so he allows the beholder to commune with a bigger idea of humanity itself and imbues his work with a universal quality, offering an invitation to the viewer to renew not just their own visual and psychological references, but also to question larger conventional orthodoxies.

Banisadr’s art-historical inspirations are extensive; Persian miniaturists, Kandinsky, Marinetti, Veronese, Richter, Abstract Expressionism and the nightmarish visions of Bosch and Brueghel. Alongside these are a range of literary influences, as well as contemporary motifs drawn from comic books, films and music. Sound is integral to Banisadr’s practice; indeed, the power of his work is attributable to the synaesthesia he experiences while painting.