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The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University presents Ali Banisadr: The Alchemist, a major survey of the Iranian-born, New York-based artist whose densely layered paintings bring together art history, lived experience, sound and the turbulence of contemporary life. On view January 27 through June 6, 2027, the exhibition spans nearly two decades of Banisadr’s career, bringing together paintings, sculptures, and works on paper created from 2006 to the present. An opening celebration will be held January 27 from 6 to 8 p.m. and is open to the public.
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Organized by the Katonah Museum of Art and curated by Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe, director and chief curator, The Alchemist examines Banisadr’s distinctive approach to painting, in which abstraction and figuration continually emerge from and dissolve into one another.
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Born in Tehran in 1976, Banisadr spent his early childhood amid the Iran-Iraq War before leaving Iran with his family at age 12. His experience of synesthesia, through which sound evokes color, movement and texture, has become fundamental to his approach to painting. Across densely populated compositions, forms gather, fracture and transform, producing worlds that seem simultaneously historical and imagined. Banisadr draws freely across centuries and cultures, finding inspiration in sources ranging from Persian miniature painting and Mesopotamian antiquities to late medieval and Renaissance painting and German Expressionism. Rather than quoting these traditions directly, he absorbs and transforms them, creating visual environments in which personal experience, mythology, collective histories and contemporary events converge.
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“This exhibition has been a long time coming,” said Dr. Gannit Ankori, Director and Chief Curator of the Rose Art Museum, who is organizing the Rose’s presentation. “When Ali first visited the Rose in 2023, we began a conversation about his work and its deep engagement with history, perception and the visual languages of the past. I am thrilled to welcome him back to the Rose and to share the remarkable breadth of his practice with our audiences.”
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Throughout The Alchemist, seemingly opposing forces coexist: chaos and composure, abstraction and representation, the personal and the collective. Banisadr’s compositions reward sustained looking, as fragments of figures, architecture and landscape emerge from and recede into fields of color and movement. Autobiographical experience, sonic impressions, invented narratives, mythology and art-historical references mingle across his surfaces without settling into a single reading.
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The exhibition’s title evokes alchemy as both a process of transformation and a metaphor for Banisadr’s method. Historical references, sensory experiences, personal associations, and contemporary events are gathered and transformed through painting, generating images that resist fixed narratives and shift continually between recognition and abstraction.
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“At a time when wars are raging across our fractured world, including a violent conflict between the US and Iran, engaging with Banisadr’s art becomes more important than ever,” Ankori said. “His monumental paintings are liminal spaces that bring together art history, ancient and modern cultures, beauty, and exuberant color and movement, while alluding to the contemporary angst and political strife permeating our world. Art becomes a space for thoughtful reflection, empathy, and the possibility of hope and harmony.”
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Ali Banisadr (b. 1976, Tehran, Iran) earned a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2005 and an MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2007. Banisadr has been the subject of solo museum exhibitions at the Museo Stefano Bardini and Palazzo Vecchio, Florence; Benaki Museum, Athens; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut; Gemäldegalerie, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna; and Het Noordbrabants Museum, Den Bosch, Netherlands. His work is held in major public collections including the British Museum, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
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Ali Banisadr: The Alchemist is organized by the Katonah Museum of Art and curated by Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe, director and chief curator. The Rose Art Museum presentation is organized by Gannit Ankori, Henry and Lois Foster Director and Chief Curator.
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