Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley is the first mid-career survey devoted to artists and twin brothers Nikolai and Simon Haas (b. 1984, Austin, Texas), who founded their collaborative studio in Los Angeles in 2010. The duo is known for their artistic practice that cross-pollinates the fields of art, craft, design, and technology.
The brothers’ materially rich work reveals a frenzied creative imagination combined with a right-brain inventiveness—a process they refer to as “problem-solving fantasies.” Much of their art is a continuation of fictive characters, fantastic creatures, and other-worldly realms often filtered through cultural references and technological aesthetics of growing up in the 1990s and early aughts. Often irreverent and always meticulous, their artworks explore themes related to nature, fantasy, the subconscious, and the human experience. Conceptually, they embrace the surrealistic, the animistic, and the zoomorphic, for instance, to conjure alternative realms.
The exhibition includes examples from the major bodies of work that the artists have been engaged with over the last 15 years presented through striking vignettes that bring to life the Haas Brothers’ “worlds.” It will also show how these works and worlds are made by highlighting their processes, material explorations, and innovations.
The Haas Brothers have exhibited their work widely throughout the United States and abroad. They have been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Nasher Sculpture Center; Katonah Museum of Art; Bass Museum of Art; Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art; and have been featured in numerous group exhibitions. In 2019, they were recipients of the YoungArts Foundation Arison Award. Their work is in the permanent collections of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art; the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
| Hours | 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM |
| Venue | Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) |
| Type | Exhibition |
| Duration | 11:00 AM - 5:00 PM |
| City | New York City |
About
Museum of Arts and Design (MAD)
MAD champions contemporary makers across creative fields, presenting artists, designers, and artisans who apply the highest level of ingenuity and skill to their work. Since the Museum’s founding in 1956 by philanthropist and visionary Aileen Osborn Webb, MAD has celebrated all facets of making and the creative processes by which materials are transformed, from traditional techniques to cutting-edge technologies. Today, the Museum’s curatorial program builds upon a rich history of exhibitions that emphasize a cross-disciplinary approach to art and design, and reveals the workmanship behind the objects and environments that shape our everyday lives. MAD provides an international platform for practitioners who are influencing the direction of cultural production and driving 21st-century innovation, fostering a participatory setting for visitors to have direct encounters with skilled making and compelling works of art and design.
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