Sumer gallery is pleased to present Rhythm & Cuts, a new exhibition by Sydney-based artist Huseyin Sami. The show features a collection of the artist's signature ‘cut paintings’ (all 2025). This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Exhibiting widely for the past three decades, Sami has built a strong following within his Australian homeland and abroad. Recognised for his playful approach to painting and abstraction, he has pursued a project built around experiments in paint, and considering paintings relationship to the body.
Continuing a tradition of non-objective and reductive painting, Sami’s work can be seen to echo those of key European modernists; and most notably, the cut and punctured monochrome paintings of Lucio Fontana. Yet whereas Fontana’s works appear impassioned and violent—gesturing towards the heroic, with existential gravitas—Sami’s own cut paintings seem, by contrast, far lighter and more exuberant. Fontana’s preference of primary colours, is contrasted with pastel tones in Sami’s work. Both artists arcing cuts are equally simple—both recording the artists’ hands and bodies moving through space—yet Sami’s gestures seem less grandiose. By shifting the cut from up-and-down to sideways, over and across, he makes rainbow-like cuts. These in turn create flaps in the canvas that peel downwards and out from the frame—whimsical and droopy, is if it were the tongue of a cartoon puppy, or the emoji you send when conveying that you’ve said or done something cheeky.
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.
