Image: Haas Brothers. © Haas Brothers
‘Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley,’ a mid-career survey of the artist duo Nikolai and Simon Haas, will open September 27 at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin. The exhibition will remain on view through January 17, 2027, bringing more than 80 works spanning 15 years of the brothers’ practice to the university museum.
The survey brings together objects that combine elaborate craft with anthropomorphic and biomorphic forms. Works cited in the exhibition material include ‘Centripeter Shire’ (2019), made from glass beads, wire and mixed-fiber stuffing; ‘She’s So Ducky’ (2018), incorporating carved walnut, velvet, glass and electrical components; and ‘Cyberzoid 3’ (2023), made from 3D-printed nylon, automotive paint and glow-in-the-dark blown glass. Other works use porcelain, marble, bronze, brass and hand-blown glass.
The exhibition’s title refers to the “uncanny valley,” a concept in robotics describing the unease that can arise when an artificial figure becomes almost, but not quite, human. Simon Haas explains that adding “an extra dose of cuteness” to a humanoid object can increase empathy, while Blanton curator Carter Foster describes the effect as a movement between the familiar and unfamiliar. The brothers’ candy-colored creatures and playful titles—including ‘Christofur Walken’ and ‘Hairy J. Blige’—form part of that strategy.
The source material frames humor and cuteness as an entry point into more difficult subjects, including sexuality, gender and bodily shame. Some works deliberately incorporate exposed anatomical forms, while others draw on the visual language of stuffed animals, furniture and decorative objects. Foster said the artists’ material control is central to the work, describing their execution as “deadly serious” and their humor as a foil to their technical virtuosity.
Collaboration and systems are also central to the survey. Many of the works emerged through partnerships with artisan collectives in South Africa and California. Simon Haas developed the ‘Bead Book,’ an algorithmic syntax used as a shared language across those collaborations. The artists’ formal structures include Fibonacci sequences for flower heads and proportional systems for leaves. Their practice also includes ‘Accretions,’ paintings in which algorithmic rules govern the buildup of three-dimensional paint surfaces.
The Austin presentation places the survey in the city where the twins spent formative years in the 1990s. According to the source material, they learned stone carving from their father and creative storytelling from their mother, a television writer. The survey is organized by Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and curated by its chief curator, Laura Mott, with assistance from curatorial fellow Katy Kim; the Blanton presentation is a stop on the national tour. Mott, herself an Austin native, described the local framing as a deliberate adaptation of the touring exhibition. The checklist remains unchanged, she said, but each presenting institution can shape the surrounding context according to its own mission.
At the Blanton, that context includes the contrast between the museum’s civic and academic setting and the Haas Brothers’ irreverent approach to decorum. Mott connected the artists’ creatures to the familiarity of taxidermy in Texas, particularly the difference between a stuffed animal associated with comfort and a mounted animal that can provoke unease. Foster said the museum would not hide explicitly titled works such as ‘King Dong,’ but would consider their placement so visitors could encounter them on their own terms. ‘Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley’ opens September 27 and continues through January 17, 2027.
