Biography
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 studied at Camberwell School of Art, London and The Rijksakademie, Amsterdam. He works with a range of media, predominantly drawing, painting and video. Publications in which his work is featured include Vitamin D2, published by Phaidon; Drawing People by Roger Malbert, published by Thames and Hudson; and Interdisciplinary Encounters - Hidden and Visible Explorations of the work of Adrian Rifkin, published by I.B.Tauris. Recent group exhibitions include ‘A Slice Through the World’ at Modern Art Oxford and Drawing Room London and ‘Trouble in Paradise’ at the Kunsthal, Rotterdam. He has had solo exhibitions at Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam, Luisa Strina Gallery, Saõ Paulo, Art Basel Hong Kong (with Upstream Gallery) and The Armory Show NY. He has shown in group exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Turner Contemporary Margate UK, Fruitmarket Gallery Edinburgh, De Appel Amsterdam, MIMA Middlesborough UK, The Eye- Film Museum Amsterdam, The Bluecoat Liverpool and the New Art Space, Amsterdam. In 2011 he exhibited as part of the 12th Istanbul Biennial. He was awarded the Irinox Disengi /Drawing Prize at Artissima Turin in 2017 and the Jeanne Oosting Prize in The Hague, N.L. in 2012.
Publications:
Haines, David. Selected Works 2008-2014. Amsterdam: Upstream Gallery, 2014.