Everything Shakes

Upstream Gallery proudly presents a new solo exhibition by David Haines: Everything Shakes.

In 'Everything Shakes', artist David Haines shows how instability pervades all aspects of contemporary life. Working across painting, drawing, cast objects and porcelain, he asks us to consider the personal alongside the political, the material alongside the ephemeral, revealing otherwise unnoticed subjectivities. This new, complex body of work invites viewers to question the nature of observation and interpretation while also celebrating the potential of art to articulate small as well as large-scale ambiguities, uncertainties, tremors and shakes.

The exhibition originates from deeply personal moments over the last two years, during which the artist has been caring for his mother. Initially, he began by drawing the pill strips she was taking, drawn to their minimalist geometry—simple circles and squares that suggested the stability of modernist compositions. However, as he began to combine both his mother’s and his own medications in these drawings, what started as a quiet meditation on caregiving and the passage of time evolved into a double portrait—an exploration of identity, relationships, and memory, revealing subjectivities within otherwise mundane objects. This exploration extended when Haines began casting the pill strips in porcelain—historically known as the "white gold" of the 18th century. This material choice reflected the period of the pandemic, a time when even common medications became scarce. The resulting series of over 400 cast pill strips blends both his and his mother’s medications, creating a fragile portrait that teeters on the edge of chaos. The tension between caregiving and dependency is mirrored in the material itself—porcelain’s delicacy hints at both fragility and resilience. Further casts of the packaging from the medication, rendered in plaster, initially appear as minimalist, modernist forms. However, upon closer inspection, they reveal subtle imperfections: tears, creases, and dents. These flaws disrupt the simplicity, drawing attention to the fragility and lived experience embedded within these objects. All of these works speak of an attempt to materialize what is otherwise fleeting and transient.

A new series of paintings continues Haines' ongoing exploration of the dark, refracted reflections from the black mirrors of our digital devices—images that blur the boundaries of the picture plane. By translating this visual language into both drawing and painting, he navigates subjects that resist clear definition—elusive, fleeting, and always in flux. These works create nuanced spaces that challenge the increasingly polarized binaries of contemporary life, suggesting that what is depicted is not anchored in a fixed place but instead occupies an ambiguous, shifting terrain.

This theme becomes particularly clear in a series of near-monochrome paintings of flowers. Their true form reveals itself only gradually. The melancholic flowers flicker and refract, slipping in and out of focus, refusing to settle for the viewer’s gaze. Much like the pill strips, the flowers gesture toward care and tenderness, yet remain unreachable, elusive. At the same time, the still life carries a quiet agency, alluding to the symbolism of 17th-century Dutch still lifes—complex symbols of a trading empire. However, Haines’ flowers are ephemeral, hypnotic, speculative and resistant to stillness. A painting of a statue of the ancient Greek goddess Demeter, located in the British Museum, also appears to tremor. The statue and its surroundings seem restless, visually vibrating, refracted. This translation from carved stone to painted image animates the otherwise inert statue, while Demeter—the goddess of the harvest and fertility—evokes contemporary anxieties surrounding the natural world. The statue’s instability is further emphasized by the ongoing debate over its repatriation, with the Turkish government calling for its return to Anatolia.

A series of small drawings illustrates how seemingly minor gestures can convey profound messages. By depicting the wounded faces of three ancient Greek gods—figures whose identities have been lost to time—these battered heads reflect a loss of identity and agency, resonating with a broader sense of uncertainty in a world that once seemed stable. In contrast, a small drawing of the Michelangelo cast room in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow raises critical questions about the intersection of art, identity, and cultural hypocrisy, particularly as Michelangelo’s often semi-homoerotic, humanist sculptures directly conflict with a dictatorial regime that is fiercely anti-LGBTQ+.

Everything Shakes is an invitation to engage with the complex and unstable dynamics of material, memory, and personal experience: a restless, unfinished translation of experiences, emotions, politics, and materials into new and tremulous visual form.

David Haines was born in Nottingham ,U.K. But has lived and worked in Amsterdam now for more than half his life. His work has been exhibited internationally in numerous exhibitions including The British Museum, London; The National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), Athens; Modern Art, Oxford, UK; Arter, Istanbul; The Drawing Room, London; Museum fuer Neue Kunst, Freiburg, Germany; Tallinn Kunsthal, Tallinn, Estonia; Centraal Museum, Utrecht, Netherlands; Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK; Teylers Museum, Haarlem, Netherlands; De Appel, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, UK; Bluecoat, Liverpool, UK; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Kunsthal, Rotterdam, Netherlands, and the 11th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey. His work is in many private and public collections including the British Museum, London and the Teylers Museum, Haarlem.

The exhibition was made possible thanks to the support of Lotte Nijhof, Marianne Peijnenburg, and Annelie Musters at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.

 

Image: David Haines, Blisters (Grid), 2024 graphite and nero pencil on paper, 20x20cm

 

Everything Shakes | David Haines
Public opening: 26 October 17.00 - 19.30s hrs.
26 October - 21 December, 2024