In his 1961 essay 'The Photographic Message' (1961) Roland Barthes observed that in primitive painting '”spirituality” is not a signified but, as it were, the very being of the image'. Haines uses this premise to discuss the ontological nature of image making in this new series of drawings. Considering semiotic classifications, Haines investigates the indexical nature of drawing itself. Filling his compositions with a skeptical symbolism, he questions the search for spirituality within the artwork. As in earlier work, the protagonists in his work are taken from contemporary (gay) youth culture and obscure Internet memes. A clubber, alone at night and in a seeming state of ecstasy appears, through being photographed, to become ghostly, transparent and vibrate in front of a monumental classical facade (a church, a temple?). A youth in a room at night stares into his laptop screen, surrounded by Islamic patterns. The Buddhist symbol of eternity reflects in his eyes as the lights from outside appear to creep inwards and his mobile phone vibrates, blurring the numbers and their infinite configurations. The lights of a cityscape flicker as two boys pose on a rooftop with inflatable 'aliens'. Haines offers his viewer scenes of slippery spectres, with signifiers refusing to keep still. Through questioning transcendental symbolism, the hand made mark and photographic language; the spiritual is inexorably linked to the index. Within the photograph this emanates from the subject, within drawing the index is the drawing itself.
