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, imaginative creativity combined with 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 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 also shows how these works and worlds are made by highlighting their processes, material explorations, and innovations.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a 256-page monograph featuring new curatorial insights, co-published by Cranbrook Art Museum and The Monacelli Press, with assistance from the Nasher Sculpture Center.
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.
Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley is organized by Cranbrook Art Museum and curated by Laura Mott, Chief Curator, with the assistance of Katy Kim, Jeanne and Ralph Graham Curatorial Fellow. The Cranbrook Art Museum presentation of the exhibition is generously supported by the George Francoeur Art Museum Exhibition Fund, Rebecca Applebaum-Wyett, Karen and Drew Bacon, and Marc Schwartz and Emily Camiener. Support for the exhibition catalog has been generously provided by R & Company, Nasher Sculpture Center, Marianne Boesky Gallery, Lora Reynolds Gallery, and SOCO Gallery.