Marianne Boesky Gallery, Aspen, CO 2018
Photo Credit: Tony Prikryl
The Haas Brothers have long been some of our favorite industrial designers, mostly because they are upending and redefining what a functional household object or furniture piece can and should be. The works have always been provocative and funny, but actually usable and collectible furniture and sculpture works. They just recently opened a new solo show, Stonely Planet, at Marianne Boesky in Aspen, showing some of their classic works and newer works made from marble.
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.
