Huseyin Sami considers his studio-based practice an exploration, and possible rearticulation, of painting, both in terms of material process and artistic discipline. Continuing a tradition of non-objective and reductive abstraction, his conceptual approach to painting distils convention as he looks to grant new and unpredictable potential to its distinct agents. His works iteratively and experimentally engage with the process of making paintings, and moreover of paint in itself: as a material and form, as both surface and substrate/ground. These progressive pursuits have explored the material of house paint specifically, utilising this commonplace and ubiquitous material as the basis for his studies of colour, form and materiality. Sami’s practice circumvents new questions and strategies toward the making of paintings, engaging a repertoire of pictorial codes and devices such as pouring, dripping, rolling, stretching and cutting paint (of the everyday) to present the possibility of opening up a new creative space.
Huseyin Sami (Born 1979, United Kingdom) lives and works in Sydney. He received a Bachelor of Visual Arts with First Class Honours from Sydney College of the Arts in 2000, and a Master of Visual Arts from the same institution in 2003. He has exhibited in major exhibitions including Equal Area, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney (2018); Superposition of Three Types, Artspace, Sydney (2017); Shut Up and Paint, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2016); Vivid, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2016); and Primavera, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2004). In 2023 Sami released his first monograph dedicated to 30 years of artistic practice. His work is held in public and private collections internationally and within Australia, including Artbank, Sydney, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.