Looking back at centuries of art, animal representations have been consistently present, serving various roles such as companions, deities, labourers, or raw materials. In his 1977 essay 'Why Look at Animals,' John Berger explored the historical connection between humans and animals, highlighting how their parallel lives once prompted fundamental questions. However, this relationship was disrupted in the West during the nineteenth-century capitalist era, a dissociation that persisted and evolved through modernism and 21st-century digitalization.
In Berger's essay, he delves into the mutual gaze shared by humans and animals, describing it as an exchange across a narrow abyss of non-comprehension. David Haines, in his recent dog drawings, aims to explore the space of uncertainty and digital slippage. Using refracted images, he responds to the digital realm, mirroring the layered glossy glass surfaces of screens and challenging the binary essence of digital representation. Haines invites viewers to engage with a nuanced space created from physical materials (graphite, paper), questioning the isolating nature of binary representation—both from each other and the natural world.