The Blanton Museum of Art Presents Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley

The renowned twin artists bring a decade and a half of fantastical worlds, boundary- pushing craft, and irreverent humor back to Austin with Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley.

Austin, Texas—July 7, 2026—The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin presents Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley, the first mid-career survey tracing 15 years of the boundary-defying practice of twin brothers and internationally-acclaimed artists Nikolai and Simon Haas (b.1984). The exhibition, part of a national tour, will be on view from September 27, 2026, to January 17, 2027 at the Blanton, with a special preview for Members of the museum from September 23 to September 26, 2026.

Since founding their collaborative studio in 2010 in Los Angeles, where they were also born, the Haas Brothers have forged a practice that cross-pollinates art, craft, design, and technology. Rooted in rigorous material experimentation, they work across an eclectic mix of mediums— including cast bronze, hand-carved exotic woods, ceramics, blown glass, and vibrant beadwork— to create organic, otherworldly forms that defy traditional categorization. This blend of conceptual rigor and technical precision marries Simon’s penchant for analytical systemization with Nikolai’s signature playfulness. Their fantastical practice serves as a direct extension of the childhood imaginations the brothers carried into adulthood, deeply fueled by growing up in both the city of Austin and the state of Texas, where they lived from ages 3 to 19.

Coming of age in an eclectic community widely known for its “Keep Austin Weird” slogan, welcoming creative vibe, and diverse music scene, the twins translated the unique environment of Austin into the rebellious yet meticulous creativity on display today. The presentation of Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley at the Blanton will be the artists’ first major museum exhibition in Austin, a city whose arts and creative community they have remained closely connected to through the years.

“We are extremely proud to showcase the playful and innovative body of work developed by homegrown Texas talent over the past two decades,” said Simone Wicha, Director of the Blanton Museum of Art. “Nikki and Simon were shaped by the creative spirit of 1990s Austin and the city’s unique physical landmarks and nurturing creative culture that inspired their playful outlook, one that gave them the freedom and confidence to find an exuberant voice where the cross-pollination of ideas thrives.”

Featuring over 80 artworks, Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley traces the artists’ major bodies of work through a series of striking vignettes that bring the brothers’ uncanny worlds to life. Within this ecosystem where the strange meets the familiar, visitors encounter fictional, cartoonish creatures and biomorphic forms heavily inspired by the pop culture, early digital rendering, and technological aesthetics of the 1990s and early aughts. Tempered by humor and irreverence, the flora and fauna of the Haas Brothers challenge our reality, offering a visionary glimpse into an unseen world that feels simultaneously alien and alive.

By structuring the exhibition space as an interconnected network to mirror this ecosystem, Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley functions as a living laboratory of form. The works operate as component parts of a singular, vast machine, a cumulative effect underscoring a core philosophy that design is not a final destination, but a continuous loop of replication and mutation. Ultimately, this environment is far more than a collection of artifacts; it is a vivid, self-sustaining world in mid- evolution.

Prominently featured will be intricately beaded plant sculptures, some using hundreds of thousands of antique Venetian glass beads. To create these replicas, Simon examines the mathematical formulas in the Bead Book—an authoritative glossary of rule-based stitches—to maintain real-world proportions. Hidden beneath the whimsical surface lies a set of rigid principles guiding their shapes, including a Fibonacci progression in flowers, a double-scale increase in leaves, and off-center axes that produce natural curvature.

Also on view is the monumental sculpture The Strawberry Tree (2023), featuring a cast bronze tree trunk adorned with intricate beaded foliage and glowing, blown-glass strawberries. Embodying the trajectory of the artists’ work in the contemporary art space distinct from design, two large paintings from their newest acrylic-on-canvas series, Accretions, will be on display. Inspired by layered accumulation in the natural world, the artists squeezed bottles of paint under a predetermined set of rules, building up the surfaces over time to create a richly textured, three- dimensional finish.

In addition to the objects on view, the exhibition pulls back the curtain on the studio’s methods, highlighting the unique processes, material explorations, and technological innovations behind their creations.

The ‘uncanny valley’ generally refers to robotics, where empathy for a robot increases the more human you make it—up to a point.

Artist Simon Haas explains: “When the robot becomes too human, empathy switches to revulsion. The solution for this is to add cuteness: when a robot is humanoid with an extra dose of cuteness, empathy for the object skyrockets. Looking at our 15- year career from a bird’s-eye view, the ‘uncanny valley’ came into focus as a core theme.”

“What makes Uncanny Valley so compelling is the way it invites viewers into a fully realized universe governed by its own logic,” said Carter Foster, Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Collections at the Blanton Museum of Art. “Beneath the humor, exuberance, and visual excess is an astonishing degree of discipline and experimentation, revealing artists deeply committed to pushing materials and ideas into unexpected territory.”

The Haas Brothers have exhibited widely throughout the United States and internationally. They have been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Katonah Museum of Art, Bass Museum of Art, and the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Museum of Art. In 2019, they received the YoungArts Foundation Arison Award. Their work resides in prestigious permanent collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum of Art.

Following its debut at Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (November 2, 2025 – February 22, 2026), the national tour of Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley travelled to the Museum of Arts and Design in New York (April 11 – September 13, 2026), and will make its debut at the Blanton Museum of Art before concluding its major multi-city run at the Mint Museum (July 17, 2027 – January 2, 2028) in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley is organized by Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and curated by Laura Mott, Chief Curator and Austin native, with support by Katy Kim, Jeanne and Ralph Graham Curatorial Fellow.

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Learn more about the show, view upcoming related events, and more on the exhibition page.