In The Fortune Teller (2024), Banisadr uses geometry, a new compositional device for him, to divide the painting into discrete areas. There are two different-sized, overlapping pyramids rising from the bottom edge. The apex of a small yellow one touches the middle of the painting’s top edge. Painted a color found nowhere else in the painting, it becomes a mysterious sign, whose meaning we cannot decipher. Is it a sign of hope, a message, or a structure seen in the distance? On either side of the yellow pyramid, linear elements descend from the top edge, dividing the sky into separate zones. Located in the upper right-hand corner, the blue and white streaked, irregular rectangle works in counterpoint to the hubbub taking place in the rest of the painting. Everything in The Fortune Teller seems to be rising up in defiance of gravity.
