Images sourced from the internet often form the basis of David Haines’s work, whose practice actively examines the artist’s own position as someone who makes pictorial and textual narratives in the wake of abstraction, conceptual art and photography, and whose themes include an exploration of digital identities, online communities, contemporary myths and the indexical nature of drawing itself. Haines is aware of the status of the labour-intensive medium of pencil drawing in the digital age, whose immersive results require ‘slow viewing’, inhabiting the often-overlooked space between looking and interpretation. In his videos, the artist explores the same issues as in his drawings, such as mass media, adolescence, cruelty and gay erotica. Like the drawings, his video work is frequently based on material found on YouTube or taken from newspaper articles.
David Haines (1969, United Kingdom) is a British artist who lives and works in Amsterdam. He studied at Camberwell School of Art in London and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. His work has been exhibited at places such as the Stedelijk Museum, De Appel and the New Art Space (NASA) in Amsterdam. In the UK his work has been shown at The Turner Contemporary, MIMA, Fruitmarket Gallery Edinburgh and the Bluecoat, Liverpool. In 2011 he exhibited as part of the 12th Istanbul Biennial. Haines has had four solo exhibitions at Upstream Gallery. The most recent was A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen, an exhibition of new works on paper, wall drawings and two channel video.