BY BARRETT DOLATA
The Haas Brothers apply layer after layer of porcelain slip — thousands of applications, each barely visible — until a ceramic form starts to look less like pottery and more like living coral.
It's just one example of the meticulous and expansive work the twin brothers have been perfecting for 15 years, and now that practice is getting its first major showcase: a mid-career retrospective opening Sunday at Cranbrook Art Museum through Feb. 22.
"Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley" includes 100 works of surrealist hybrid creatures, fantastical worlds and boundary-pushing material experimentation, crafted in the Haas Brothers studio founded in Los Angeles in 2010. Cranbrook is the first stop on a national tour that will bring the exhibition to New York, Austin, Texas, and Charlotte, North Carolina, through 2028.
"What's interesting about the Haas Brothers is that they have a really hybrid kind of artistic practice that spans art, sculpture, paint, ceramics, design and functional objects as well," says Laura Mott, chief curator at Cranbrook. "So I just think that they were a really good match for the mission and program that we do."
When asked to describe their process, Simon Haas rattles off an almost comical list of materials.
"Glass beads, glass blowing, hard glass, stone, fur, bronze, copper, walnut, maple, rags, wire, digital medium like JavaScript, projectors, ceramic, brass, stainless steel, aluminum," he says. "Did you want me to keep going?"
Mott first discovered their work during a visit to their studio in 2017, where she was "blown away," comparing it to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory and Andy Warhol.
"The work is very playful and fascinating, but also it's just masterfully made," she says.
By 2020, Mott and the brothers began conversations about a show. But rather than a traditional chronological survey of their 15-year practice, she wanted something more immersive — a way to present their various bodies of work in dialogue with each other while revealing the processes behind them.
"In the middle of the main gallery is like the Haas world, and then on the sides, where there's more didactics, is sort of the making of that world," Mott explains. "So we kind of break down some of their processes in the exhibition."
For the brothers, curating and seeing 15 years of work installed offers a rare perspective.
"It's pretty cathartic, because it gives us the opportunity to — I mean, we're always sort of looking into the future — but it gives us a moment to sort of understand our past, frame it and then move forward with it," Nikolai says.
One work in the exhibition exemplifies both their technical range and collaborative ethos: a large blue tree decorated with illuminated strawberries. For both brothers, it's a favorite — and a beautiful culmination of their practice.
"That artwork for me, and I think for Simon, too, is just so many different technical capabilities coming together in order to create one object," Nikolai says. "I'm not sure if anything else we make quite demands the technical ability in so many different types of work."
The strawberry tree also represents their commitment to community-driven making. Rather than outsourcing fabrication, the brothers bring piecework — like the tree's beaded leaves — to communities where employment opportunities, particularly for women, are limited. For this piece, they worked with a farming community in Central California.
"We invite people who want to learn beadwork to a workshop, and then we wind up hiring lots of them for piecework," Simon says. "So the beaded tree you see was made by many different people, and it's amazing because you see it all come together in one piece. It's a very social experience, too. A lot better than just sending something off."
That hands-on, community-oriented approach traces back to their origins, too. The brothers grew up in a family of makers — their father did construction and stonework — and that foundation in craft has shaped everything since.
"We started our career as designers, and before we even had our career, we were makers," Nikolai says. "So we're craftspeople who became designers, who became artists, who were always all three the whole time, I suppose."
For both Nikolai and Simon, that evolution makes Cranbrook the ideal inaugural space for their work.
"We really have our foot in craft, almost more than anything, and that is in the DNA of Cranbrook," Nikolai says. "And then we really have our feet in design, which is also super in the DNA of Cranbrook. And we really now have our feet in art, so the three things that really define Cranbrook really define us as well."
The exhibition is accompanied by a 256-page monograph published by Phaidon's Monacelli Press, offering a deeper look into both their technical processes and collaborative relationships. The book features essays by Mott and Brooke Hodge, curator of a major Haas Brothers commission at Dallas's Nasher Sculpture Center in 2024, along with firsthand narratives and personal archival images from the brothers themselves.
The Haas Brothers will give an artist lecture on Nov. 2 at 3 p.m., with additional opening events, curator-led tours, and workshops available throughout the exhibition.
