PREVIEW:Haas Brothers-Uncanny Valley

Featuring over 80 artworks, “Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley”  traces the artists’ major bodies of work through a series of striking vignettes that bring the brothers’ uncanny worlds to life. Within this ecosystem where the strange meets the familiar, visitors encounter fictional, cartoonish creatures and biomorphic forms heavily inspired by the pop culture, early digital rendering, and technological aesthetics of the 1990s and early aughts.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Blanton Museum of Art

Tempered by humor and irreverence, the flora and fauna of the Haas Brothers challenge our reality, offering a visionary glimpse into an unseen world that feels simultaneously alien and alive, the retrospective “Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley”, is the first mid-career survey tracing 15 years of the boundary-defying practice of twin brothers and internationally-acclaimed artists Nikolai and Simon Haas.

Since founding their collaborative studio in 2010 in Los Angeles, where they were also born, the Haas Brothers have forged a practice that cross-pollinates art, craft, design, and technology. Rooted in rigorous material experimentation, they work across an eclectic mix of mediums— including cast bronze, hand-carved exotic woods, ceramics, blown glass, and vibrant beadwork— to create organic, otherworldly forms that defy traditional categorization. This blend of conceptual rigor and technical precision marries Simon’s penchant for analytical systemization with Nikolai’s signature playfulness. Their fantastical practice serves as a direct extension of the childhood imaginations the brothers carried into adulthood, deeply fueled by growing up in both the city of Austin and the state of Texas, where they lived from ages 3 to 19.

Coming of age in an eclectic community widely known for its “Keep Austin Weird” slogan, welcoming creative vibe, and diverse music scene, the twins translated the unique environment of Austin into the rebellious yet meticulous creativity on display today. The presentation of “Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley” at the Blanton will be the artists’ first major museum exhibition in Austin, a city whose arts and creative community they have remained closely connected to through the years.

By structuring the exhibition space as an interconnected network to mirror this ecosystem, “Uncanny  Valley” functions  as  a  living  laboratory  of  form.  The  works  operate  as component parts of a singular, vast machine, a cumulative effect underscoring a core philosophy that design is not a final destination, but a continuous loop of replication and mutation. Ultimately, this environment is far more than a collection of artifacts; it is a vivid, self-sustaining world in mid- evolution.

Prominently  featured  are intricately  beaded  plant  sculptures,  some  using  hundreds  of thousands of antique Venetian glass beads. To create these replicas, Simon examines the mathematical formulas in the “Bead Book”—an authoritative glossary of rule-based stitches—to maintain real-world proportions. Hidden beneath the whimsical surface lies a set of rigid principles guiding their shapes, including a Fibonacci progression in flowers, a double-scale increase in leaves, and off-center axes that produce natural curvature.

Also on view is the monumental sculpture “The Strawberry Tree” (2023), featuring a cast bronze tree  trunk  adorned  with  intricate  beaded  foliage  and  glowing, blown-glass  strawberries. Embodying the trajectory of the artists’ work in the contemporary art space distinct from design, two large paintings from their newest acrylic-on-canvas series, “Accretions”, is on display. Inspired by layered accumulation in the natural world, the artists squeezed bottles of paint under a predetermined set of rules, building up the surfaces over time to create a richly textured, three- dimensional finish.

In addition to the objects on view, the exhibition pulls back the curtain on the studio’s methods, highlighting the unique processes, material explorations, and technological innovations behind their creations.

Photo: Haas Brothers, Bruce Willis Beyonclé, 2016, Hand thrown and accreted porcelain, gold luster, and brass plate. Photo: Joe Kramm. Courtesy of R & Company. © Haas Brothers

Info: Curators: Laura Mott, Katy Kim, Blanton Museum of Art The at The University of Texas, 200 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Austin, TX, USA, Duration: 27/9/2026-17/1/2027, Days & Hours : Tue-Fri & Sun 10:00-17:00, Sat 10:00-20:00, https://blantonmuseum.org/