Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to present Stonely Planet an exhibition of new and iconic works by The Haas Brothers at Boesky West, Aspen. The Brothers have transformed the interior and exterior of the space into a whimsical and fantastical sculptural landscape. Titled Stonely Planet, the exhibition will be on view from June 20 through August 25, 2018. The Haas Brothers will also participate in an Artist Talk at the Aspen Art Museum on July 3, 2018, at 5:00 PM, which will be moderated by the museum’s Nancy and Bob Magoon CEO and Director, Heidi Zuckerman.
Since founding The Haas Brothers in 2010, brothers Nikolai and Simon have spurned arbitrary artistic boundaries and hierarchies, creating a playful and provocative world that merges art, fashion, film, music, and design. Their openness to experimentation and general curiosity has resulted in a wide-ranging visual lexicon that incorporates a spectrum of materials from stone and porcelain to brass and bronze to self-invented resins and polyurethanes. The Brothers's dynamic practice is characterized by technical precision—supported by their active collaborations with an array of artisans—and a whimsical sense of humor that speaks to a universal audience.
With Stonely Planet, The Haas Brothers return to their creative roots, exploring afresh the aesthetic potential of stone. The Brothers first came to stone carving in their youth, learning from their father, artist Berthold Haas. Working with Pele de Tigre, a Portuguese marble, The Brothers will present a series of monumental objects in the gallery’s first floor space. At first glance, the works appear to be functional home furnishings—a bathtub, coffee table, and fireplace mantle—but further inspection reveals anthropomorphic limbs and subtle material shifts that defy the objects’ expected uses. The marble pieces are augmented by two bronze chairs, sculpted in the shape of cartoonish hands, reaching up from the floor. This melding of functional design and craftsmanship with a sense of boundless imagination form the core of The Haas Brothers’s practice, altering a seemingly luxurious home interior into the den of a mythic creature.
The second floor of Boesky West will present a selection of works that have become synonymous with The Haas Brothers, including a series of their Accretions, porcelain vases made through meticulous hand processes that include the application of small tentacle-like structures to create the sensation of a soft, moving surface; Beasts, objects produced with the use of fur that at once resemble ottomans and wooly animals with brass feet and other bodily features; and Socatra brass lamps, which appear like flora growing organically throughout the space. Outside, two bronze candleholders in the form of beastly hands hold oversized candles, providing a glimpse into the experience that awaits visitors inside.
The Haas Brothers, twins Nikolai and Simon (b. 1984), founded their joint practice in Los Angeles in 2010 when architects Johnson Marklee offered them a chance to collaborate on a friend’s project. The years since have seen them evolve from fabricators and collaborators to acclaimed innovators, working across design, art, fashion, film, and music. In addition to their own practice, in 2015, The Haas Brothers embarked on a collaboration with women artisans in Cape Town, South Africa. The resulting series of intricately beaded functional and sculptural objects, Afreaks, was included in Beauty–Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, NY and at the San Jose Museum of Art in San Jose, CA. Their work is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the RISD Museum in Providence, RI, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, NY, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, NY. The Haas Brothers currently live and work in Los Angeles, California. The Bass Museum will open a solo show of their work in December 2018.
