A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen

Every new medium is a Russian doll. The radio and the cinema sit inside every television, just as the television sits inside your smart phone. Because there have been so many Russian dolls over the years, each containing the other, it’s easy to forget that the mirror is a medium, or that the simple act of making marks on paper is a technology. David Haines invites us to consider these things in the reflection of the black mirror. We carry the black mirror everywhere. It blindly reflects our image when it sleeps and every time we wake it up (with the swipe of a finger) it illuminates our desires. It sorts our personal chaos into order. The black mirror is a good servant. It files, classifies, orientates, and informs. In this respect the black mirror surpasses its master. Because the black mirror’s actions are unconscious, it is able to chart a map of the unconscious.

In Haines’ work every medium reflects another but this does not leave us abandoned in a hall of mirrors because we are grounded in the materiality of the drawings, we are drawn to the specificity of the medium – this particular sheet of paper, these specific particles of graphite.

If every image draws us to a receding horizon, beyond which the ‘real thing’ is situated, in Haines’ work we comprehend the different levels of abstraction that allow us to negotiate with the reflection of ourselves that is always fugitive, always extensive: a projection, a reflection, an image in process.

Steve Rushton, August 2017

‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’
‘A Fragile Membrane, An Illusive Screen’