Three Compositions | David Haines

Upstream Gallery is proud to present the Upstream Focus exhibition: Three Compositions by David Haines in the Private Viewing Space. The official opening will take place on Saturday 6 September from 17:00 to 19:30.

In his recent work, David Haines continues his investigation into the dark, fractured reflections appearing in the black mirrors of our digital devices—images that blur the boundaries of the picture plane. Translating this visual language into both drawings and paintings, he focuses on subjects that resist straightforward capture: fleeting, elusive, and perpetually in motion. He suggests that precisely these nuanced spaces hold the potential to challenge the increasingly polarized divides of contemporary life, proposing that what is depicted is not fixed, but exists within an ambiguous, shifting reality.

This theme emerges with particular resonance in an ongoing series of near-monochrome floral paintings. Where the viewer often approaches the flower as one of the most innocent motifs in art, Haines disrupts this notion by unsettling and interrogating its traditional associations. Rather than direct representations, the works show reflections—compositions of fractured and refracted light on glass or on the canvas itself. Their true forms reveal themselves only gradually, embodying both care and melancholy. Flickering and fracturing, they slip repeatedly in and out of focus, as if attempting to evade the viewer’s gaze.

The flowers gesture toward acts of care, tenderness, and mourning, yet remain fundamentally elusive and detached. At the same time, the still lifes carry a quiet power, evoking the symbolism of 17th-century Dutch still lifes—emblems of a trading empire whose legacy, now increasingly scrutinized, feels more precarious than ever. In this way, Haines’s flowers—ephemeral, hypnotic, and speculative—resist stasis, mirroring the restless nature of the history they invoke.

Image: Composition (Two peonie roses in a green vase), David Haines, 2025 – 50×60 cm Oil on linen

Three Compositions | David Haines
6 September – 4 October 2025
OPENING: 17:00 – 19:30 hrs
Private Viewing Space at Upstream Gallery
Kloveniersburgwal 95, 1011 KB