“[David Haines] is an artist who lives in and through our world of endless virtualities, and turns them into images of his own dwelling amongst them; strange desires, fantasies and daydreams. He makes drawings, watercolours and videos; he uses pencils, brushes, words, sounds, melodies, voices, chewing gum and actors as materials of his thought. Yet he is also an artist who undoes what we call techniques and media, making them strange and enigmatic, and in this his work is neither traditional nor is it experimental. It looks neither backward nor to the future. It invents an uncanny present…”
– Adrian Rifkin.
David Haines lives and works in Amsterdam. He graduated from Camberwell School of Art, London and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam.
Haines works with a range of media, predominantly drawing, painting and video. Through his work he investigates image-making technologies in the light of digital media. His video work has been shown at Lux, London, IDFA – Eye Filmmuseum (Amsterdam), Rooftop Films, NYC and VPRO (Dutch television).
Select solo exhibitions include The Skin’s gaze (and Other Thoughts), Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam (2020); A Fragile Membrane, an Illusive Screen, Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam (2017); Two Way Mirror, Tyneside Cinema (Gallery), Newcastle (2017); Disegni, Artissima, Turin (2017); Armory Show, New York (2016); Discoveries, Art Basel HK, Hong Kong (2014); and Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam (2013). Select group exhibitions include Modern Love (or Love in the Age of Cold Intimacies), National Museum for Contemporary Art, Athens GR, Tallinn Kunsthalle – Kunstihoone, Tallinn and Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg (2021); Trouble in Paradise, Kunsthal, Rotterdam (2019); A Slice Through the World, Drawing Room, London and Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (2018); New Dutch Short Films, Rooftop Films/ Trilok Fusion Center for the Arts, New York (2016); Art at the Spaarne (The Collection/Donation of Bart Spoorenberg), Teylers Museum, Haarlem (2016); Transformer, Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam (2015); ; Hoge Horizon, Stedelijk Museum, Lier (2014); Beauty of Violence, Museum Het Dolhuys, Haarlem (2014); and Nothing in the World But Youth, Turner Contemporary, Margate UK (2011),12th Istanbul Biennial (2011); The End of the Line; Attitudes in Drawing, Hayward Gallery, London and touring (2009); and Adam and Eve, De Appel, Amsterdam (2002). His work is in the collection of the British Museum, London and Teylers Museum, Haarlem NL and is featured in the international publications Vitamin D2 (Phaidon) and Drawing People (Thames&Hudson)
Awards include the Irinox Drawing Prize, Artissima, Turin (2017); the Jeanne Oosting Prize, The Hague (2012); and The Trinity Body Wharf Drawing Prize (award winner) in 2021.