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1 LITRE MIND PALACE

SAM STEINHAUER


Sam Steinhauer is a painter who lives and works in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales on unceded Bundjalung Country. Constructing scenes drawn from his own photographs, Steinhauer’s practice makes (non)sense of a personal archive. He holds a 1st class honors degree in Art History from the University of Melbourne (2016).

Steinhauer presents a series of self-referential acrylic and ceramic paintings that explore the elasticity of personal memory, the interplay of art and the everyday, appropriation, and the meeting points of humor and the sentimental.

The scenes paired, painted, and repeated throughout 1 litre mind palace draw from a personal archive of photographs that the artist has been cataloging for the past fifteen years. Repurposing imagery from this archive, memories are decontextualised and re-contextualised to see what nonsensical narratives and comical conversations might emerge.

Painting from photos flattened by processes of analogue photography and digital scanning, Steinhauer uses painting to continue early modernist enquiries into flattening the picture plane. He playfully renders architectural forms and figures in static movement to obscure time, space, and perspective and draw attention to the material limitations of paint as a medium.

Steinhauer's residency with El Sur is generously supported by the New South Wales Government through Create NSW's Small Projects Grant.

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