* If archaeology is concerned with the examination and recovery of historical artifacts to expose the hidden, then painting is the perfect foundation for its application. Painting as a medium involves layering paint through textures from Ali Banisadr’s personal and collective memories that intertwine the real and the virtual. The “hidden” memory and emotion is buried in the painting, and the viewer is invited to interpret its meaning. In Ali Banisadr’s paintings from his exhibitions, “We Haven’t Landed on Earth Yet,” and “It Happened and it Never Did,” he is committed to painting as a means of addressing the importance of both the visible and the invisible represented in art to reflect political conflicts in society. Ultimately, Ali Banisadr’s work demonstrates a dichotomy between a joyful celebration of abstract color and gestural forms, juxtaposed against a war-torn world in a poetic and lyrical manner. * The thirty-six-year-old Iranian born and current New York based painter, Ali Banisadr, believes that seeing and non-seeing are connected to motion and the mind’s imagination. He allows his mind to be taken over by his artistic process that is described as a “shamanic” experience that enters into a “collective unconscious.” In order to represent this psychological state that pushes the possibilities of painting, he layers colors and textures spontaneously as he goes, and translates the sounds in his head onto the canvas. The painting’s finished result forms a rhythmic, calligraphic quality that also harkens back to Banisadr’s history as a graffiti artist in California. As an artist who straddles two distinct cultures, Ali Banisadr’s work does not conform to the traditional Western style of painting that has a central focus because he believes that every part of the painting matters. In addition, Banisadr is unique because his work attempts to capture and translate sound into something visual. Ali Banisadr’s inspiration is drawn from his time as a child in Teheran during the bombings in the Iranian-Iraq war. He translates his reactions to the awful ambient noises into art from his remembrance of the vibrations and the shattering glass. Because of his traumatic experience he became interested in psychology and the subconscious, where he attempts to give birth to his imagination within his paintings. * By analyzing how Banisadr constructs his paintings and deals with space, it is evident that Bosch and de Kooning have influenced his artwork, but he is unique because his works connect auditory memory and visualization. His paintings can be compared to Bosch because his works need time to unveil themselves so the viewer can use imagination to understand the painting’s deciphered meaning. The intensely busy surfaces appear to be depicted in microcosmic detail but when viewed up close, his paintings dissolve into a frenzy of compacted brushwork similar to de Kooning’s technique. In all of Banisadr’s works, he handles his paint with tremendous physicality where his vibrant tones and textures translate into an experience of rhythm. His paintings are also distinct because they lack a central focus, and make every part of the canvas important. The scattered and fragmented characters in his paintings animate the idea that seeing and non-seeing are connected to motion and the mind’s imagination that constantly change. Another interpretation is that the distorted characters could stand for gatekeepers of systems of a war-torn culture and era. This unfocused abstraction is a technique that Banisadr uses to capture the changing quality of sound visually that harkens back to the noise of warfare from his personal history. Therefore, Banisadr’s works are unique in their ability to connect auditory memory and visualization. * Ali Banisadr’s 2012 Exhibition titled “We Haven’t Landed on Earth Yet” depicts the expression of his subconscious life from memories of a war-torn past. In his paintings such as “Excavation” and “At Sea”
