The restless surfaces of Banisadr’s paintings combine competing sensibilities, setting areas of orderly, precise brushwork against energetic, gestural ones. This creates a sense of restless motion and even conflict across the canvas, as if the entire composition is in the process of metamorphosis. He does not allow any central protagonist to emerge, instead creating a multiplicity of figures that overlap and coalesce. The artist once remarked that his childhood memories, notably of the Islamic revolution and the Iran-Iraq war, were a mix of images, half abstract and half recognisable forms. Banisadr explains that he ‘became fascinated with all histories of war, conspiracies, colonialism and corruption.’ This interest in the functioning and breakdown of systems – whether political, cultural or historical ­– is reflected in complex painted structures in which different elements intermingle and collide.

Born in Tehran in 1976, Banisadr moved to California with his family when he was a child. While living in San Francisco, he studied psychology and became involved with graffiti art. He has lived and worked in New York since 2000, where he studied at the School of Visual Arts and the New York Academy of Art. His work has been shown in numerous museums, including Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent (2010); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2012); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2013); Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany (2013); The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2017); and Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2021). He was the subject of a two-person show with Andrew Sendor at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, USA, as well as Bosch and Banisadr: We Work in Shadows at Gemäldegalerie, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna (both 2019). He was included in Love Me/Love Me Not: Contemporary Art from Azerbaijan and Its Neighbours at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. Recent solo exhibitions were held at the Het Noordbrabants Museum, ’s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands (2019); Benaki Museum, Athens (2020); Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, USA (2020); and Stefano Bardini Museum & Palazzo Vecchio Museum, Florence (2021).