“The Fortune Teller” presents a new series of works by internationally acclaimed artist Ali Banisadr – now on view at Perrotin Gallery in Shanghai. Once more the artist stands out with rigorously pursuing his singular trajectory ever since he first began exhibiting his work in 2008. Open and sincere, his depictions are remarkable for their imaginative conjuring of a self-contained world.

It is a world that Banisadr finds in the paint, like a seer who sees what others can’t. Banisadr’s divinatory process shares something with Max Ernst’s invention of surrealist techniques, such as grattage (scraping) and frottage (rubbing), which he used to depict otherworldly scenes and creatures.

However, unlike Ernst, who tended to do only one thing to his scrapings of wet paint and rubbings of uneven surfaces, such as wooden floors, Banisadr meticulously teases out a wide cast of mysterious figures and hybrid creatures from the swirls, clouds, and gestures of paint that he has applied to large and small canvases.

Eventually, these figures populate a world as dense and complex as an allegorical painting by Hieronymus Bosch or the weirder paintings of Piero di Cosimo. In fact, Banisadr is one of the few contemporary artists who can legitimately claim that Bosch and di Cosimo are among his progenitors.

Banisadr’s characters are related to the extraterrestrial beings encountered in science fiction, heroes and wizards in epic quest novels, medieval bestiaries, the ghoulish creatures that Matthias Grünewald depicted in the Isenheim Altarpiece (1512-1516), and illustrated alchemical texts, just to name some of his inspirations. However, while resolution is common to many of these works, Banisadr’s figures inhabit a turbulent, alternate world in which resolution and redemption are noticeably absent.

The Fortune Teller
Ali Banisadr
Perrotin Gallery
Shanghai
Through 21 December 2024
https://www.perrotin.com/

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