BUFFALO, NY.- The Buffalo AKG Art Museum opened the exhibition, Ali Banisadr: Temple of the Mind. The show takes place in the museum’s Hemicycle Gallery, as well as throughout the Wilmers Galleries—the first time an artist has been invited to host interventions in the AKG’s permanent collection galleries—and will be on view from Friday, June 26, to Sunday, November 8, 2026.
Ali Banisadr (American, born Iran, 1976) merges the compositional elements of landscape painting with abstract mark-making to create an altogether new form of figuration. The resulting compositions are a carefully composed bedlam of forms that suggest but ultimately deny any specific narrative. Variously reminiscent of gardens of Eden, the seasonal genre pictures of Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and Boschian depictions of Hell, Banisadr’s contemporary abstractions call upon the history of painting.
The title of the exhibition, borrowed from Albert Pinkham Ryder’s enigmatic painting, The Temple of the Mind, serves as a conceptual framework for the project, suggesting a space where perception, memory, and imagination converge. While the Romantic painter was admired for his pioneering, semi-abstract style, for Banisadr, Ryder holds a space for contemplation amid rising uncertainties.
“Ryder has always been important to me because he represents a moment when American painting found an independent, visionary, and mystical voice—moving beyond European models into something more inward, dreamlike, and psychological, which eventually opened toward abstraction,” said Banisadr. “The Temple of the Mind feels like a space of contemplation within uncertainty, and that resonates deeply with how I think about painting. In this exhibition, my work enters into dialogue with artists who have shaped my thinking—Goya, William Blake, Persian miniatures, Hiroshige, Giacometti—figures who, in different ways, approached image-making as a visionary act. In my work, I try to create environments where references to the natural world, cosmological forces, and the conditions of our present moment coexist—where distant conflicts, shifting powers, and the repetition of historical tensions reverberate beneath the surface, and where the human condition can be felt in flux rather than fixed.”
Given his deep interest in art history, the Buffalo AKG has invited Banisadr to participate in the first-ever artist collection intervention. In addition to the installation in the Hemicycle Gallery, a focused selection of Banisadr’s work has been installed throughout the Robert and Elisabeth Wilmers Building, among the dreamlike imaginings of the Surrealists and the unbridled energy of the Abstract Expressionists.
Banisadr reaches across time to draw on a wide range of influences. From art, history, literature, and mythology to music, film, and technology, he thinks of such sources as guiding his hand rather than driving his imagery, and the powerful microcosms he creates are uniquely his own. Within these layered compositions, subtle references to current events and the human condition—conflict, migration, and collective uncertainty—emerge and dissolve within the flux of his painterly language. Originating from one spontaneous moment to the next, hidden figures and beguiling narratives reveal themselves to those who slowdown in the present moment.
Banisadr’s works often evoke the natural world, its shifting terrains and elemental forces, while also suggesting cosmological dimensions that extend beyond the visible. Furthermore, the artist’s unusual experience as a synesthete—a blending of the senses—also informs his practice. Over the years, he has learned to allow his unique perceptions to guide his process, leaning into the ways that color evokes specific sounds of harmony or discord.
The presentation in the Hemicycle Gallery also features an installation that delves deeply into the artist’s influences and process through materials from his studio and an artist-curated selection of works from the museum’s collection. From Andō Hiroshige’s evocative woodcuts and Francisco de Goya’s intense, sometimes nightmarish, depictions of violence and superstition to the artist’s sketchbooks and other visual cues, visitors are invited to immerse themselves in Banisadr’s curious, fantastical world. About the project, Buffalo AKG Godin-Spaulding Senior Curator for the Collection, Holly E. Hughes, remarked, “It is an honor to welcome Banisadr into the fabric of the museum, which prides itself on being a hub of creativity for artists. Seeing his imagination come alive in our galleries has been inspiring, as art history is reimagined and new narratives emerge that intertwine his personal story with the complexity of our shared past and present.
The exhibition is accompanied by an audio journey voiced by Banisadr and will debut a new etching created with the team at Mirabo Press in Buffalo, New York. A short-documentary film on the artist is also in development.
Ali Banisadr: Temple of the Mind is organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and co-curated by the artist and Godin-Spaulding Senior Curator for the Collection, Holly E. Hughes.
