Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley

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.  

The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive 256-page monograph of their career to date with new curatorial insights and co-published by Cranbrook Art Museum and Monacelli Press with support from the Nasher Sculpture Center, Marianne Boesky Gallery, R & Company, Lora Reynolds Gallery, and SOCO Gallery. 

The exhibition will tour to venues across the United States, including the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), New York, April 11, 2026 – September 13, 2026. Other venues will be announced at a later date.