Kasmin is pleased to present the gallery’s first solo exhibition of work by artist Ali Banisadr (b.1976, Tehran). Comprising nine recent paintings, several of which were included in Banisadr’s critically-acclaimed museum show at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, in 2020-21, the exhibition will also include a new large-scale diptych, the first multi-panel work by the artist in six years. These Specks of Dust coincides with the publication of a major monograph by Rizzoli Electa featuring contributions from Negar Azimi, Robert Hobbs, Joe Lin-Hill, and John Yau.

Banisadr’s vivid and turbulent paintings conjure an energetic sense of the world by depicting the quintessentially cyclical nature of our collective history. Titled in homage to Francisco Goya’s 1799 etching from the Los Caprichos series, “Those Specks of Dust,” the exhibition assembles varied art historical references with deeply personal symbolism to depict the artist’s inner visions. Its title encompasses all the senses in which the micro and macro inform one another, from the elemental minerals of pigment that constitute Banisadr’s painterly materials to the imperceptible cells of virus that defined the year in which the works were realized.