The Haas Brothers

Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to present Inner Visions, an exhibition of new work by the Los Angeles-based artist duo the Haas Brothers (b. 1984; Austin, TX). Featuring all-new sculptures and paintings, Inner Visions—the Haas Brothers’ third solo exhibition with Marianne Boesky Gallery—captures the precise physics, disciplined methodology, and subtle spirituality underpinning their ongoing material experimentations.

Throughout their practice, the Haas Brothers—twins Nikolai and Simon—investigate the slippery divide between art and design with humor, whimsy, and inventive originality. While they are best known for their riotously colorful biomorphic forms, genitalia-adorned furniture, and pun-infused titles, an intellectual, conceptual, formal, and technical rigor grounds their practice. Marrying their respective personalities and strengths—Simon’s penchant for analysis and systemization and Niki’s playfulness, humor, and creativity—the duo’s practice integrates a studied, systematic approach to materials and processes with a commitment to dismantling the rigid social constraints, guiding them toward an emotional and spiritual resonance within their work.

With Inner Visions, the Haas Brothers debut a series of paintings—a first for their practice—alongside new bronze sculptures, both of which represent an evolution of the Accretion technique they began developing more than a decade ago. Inspired by the layered accumulation process found throughout the natural world—in coral, in tree fungus, in cave formations—the artists aspired to build something of a similar texture. In the first iteration of the Accretion process, the artists brushed layers of wet clay atop dried clay—their ceramic vessels, over time, amassing mottled, organically textured surfaces. “Accreting layer by layer we guide the growth of tiny, fragile structures until each original speck of texture has become a porcelain petal,” the Haas Brothers write. “The resulting texture is a record of time and growth, it’s fur-and-fungus-like fingers breathing life into the vessel’s form.”

The Haas Brothers—twins Nikolai and Simon—investigate the slippery divide between art and design with humor, whimsy, and inventive originality. The duo have shown their work widely in the United States and abroad. Exhibitions of their work are forthcoming at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX and the Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI. Their work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY; the Bass Museum of Art, Miami FL; the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, Savannah, GA, and featured in group exhibitions at the San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, CO; the Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, VT; Sculpture Milwaukee, WI; the Boca Raton Museum of Art, FL; the KMAC Museum, Louisville, KY. In 2016, they were included in the Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY, and in 2019, they were recipients of the YoungArts Foundation Arison Award. The Haas Brothers’ work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI; the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. The Haas Brothers live and work in Los Angeles, CA.