New Print | Ali Banisadr: al-kīmīā
Cristea Roberts Gallery is pleased to launch a new limited edition lithograph by Ali Banisadr. The purchase of each print includes a new monograph, published on the occasion of the artist’s first major institutional exhibition in the USA, The Alchemist, at The Katonah Museum of Art, New York.
al-kīmīā, 2025 - the Arabic word for alchemy - is a lithograph in seven colours, printed in an edition of sixty, each signed and numbered by the artist. The launch is exclusively available online and for a limited time only, with profits from the edition benefitting The Katonah Museum of Art.
Click below to buy.
Ali Banisadr
al-kīmīā, 2025
Lithograph in seven colours on Rives BFK paper, presented in a slip case designed by the artist and accompanied by the 2025 catalogue ‘The Alchemist’
Paper and Image: 38.1 x 28.6 cm – 15 x 11 1/4 in
Edition of 60
Paper and Image: 38.1 x 28.6 cm – 15 x 11 1/4 in
Edition of 60
Ali Banisadr, al-kīmīā, 2025
£ 1,400.00 + VAT
This new print, published by Cristea Roberts Gallery, was editioned at Universal Limited Art Editions in New York and is presented in a fabric-bound slip case alongside his new monograph, which includes an introduction by museum director Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe, with contributions by curator Elizabeth Monti, art historian William H. Sherman, critic Robert Storr, curator Gražina Subelytė, and the artist, Ali Banisadr.
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Ali Banisadr is best known for his complex, stirring paintings, prints, and more recently, sculptures, informed by synesthesia, a sensory experience where the artist perceives visions based on sound. Banisadr began to experience synesthesia in his formative years, during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, where he channelled the reverberations of warfare into his artistic practice.
His work draws on a diverse array of artistic influences, including the Medieval Renaissance, Japanese woodblocks, religious iconography, alchemical symbolism and Persian miniatures. In al-kīmīā, dream-like forms seem to appear and dissolve. As the viewer focuses on one figure, the shadow of another slips from view. Both abstract and theatrical, Banisadr may be depicting the archetypal alchemist in his medieval apothecary, or on closer inspection, offer a prophetic vision of an unknown future in his distinctive colour palette of deep purple, aquamarine and searing orange.
Ali Banisadr
Born in Tehran, Iran in 1976, Ali Banisadr grew up amidst the turmoil of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88). In 1988, Banisadr left Iran with his family at the age of twelve, first reaching Turkey and then San Diego, California. While living in San Francisco as a young adult, he became involved with the local graffiti art community while studying psychology. He later moved to New York City where he earned a BFA at the School of Visual Arts (2005) and an MFA at the New York Academy of Art (2007). The artist currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Cristea Roberts Gallery has been publishing Banisadr's graphic works since 2022, when he first began transcribing turbulent scenes to the printing plate through etching and lithography.
Ali Banisadr: The Alchemist is open at The Katonah Museum of Art, New York until 29 June 2025. The exhibition will tour in 2026.
Click here to find out more about the artist.
Photo: Charlie Rubin, Courtesy of Kasmin, NY.