About the work

The work is the latest in a series of still lifes with flyers.

The series looks at the potential of drawing to offer a singular, indexical experience. In this sense the drawings can be seen as an antidote to online digital cultures which promise interaction but more often than not deliver isolation.

The party flyers are chosen for their titles which relate to both physicality and human emotion. They themselves have developed their own entropic singularities, developing skins – folded and creased, found in some forgotten back pocket.

Within this latest work (which formally can be seen as a drawing within a drawing within a drawing), there is of course a further embedded political reference. As well as using drawing to attempt some positive connection with a viewer, the choice of a flyer relating to a queer party which has taken place within a country in which such communities are under extreme pressure, attempts to present a positive glimmer from within the current dark political landscape.

Date and country of birth

1969, GB

About the artist

David Haines lives and works in Amsterdam. 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.

Selected 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). Selected group exhibitions include Modern Love (or Love in the Age of Cold Intimacies), 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); IDFA on Art, Eye Film Museum, Amsterdam (2015); Hoge Horizon, Stedelijk Museum, Lier (2014); Beauty of Violence, Museum Het Dolhuys, Haarlem (2014); Nothing in the World But Youth, Turner Contemporary, Margate (2011); 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011); The End of the Line; Attitudes in Drawing, Hayward Gallery, London and touring (2009); and Adam and Eve, Curated by Annie Fletcher, De Appel, Amsterdam (2002).

Awards include the Irinox Drawing Prize, Artissima, Turin (2017); and the Jeanne Oosting Prize, The Hague (2012).