{"id":3684,"date":"2026-10-15T16:10:34","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T20:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/haas-brothers-uncanny-valley-lands-in-austin-with-a-playful-mid-career-survey\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T16:10:34","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T20:10:34","slug":"haas-brothers-uncanny-valley-lands-in-austin-with-a-playful-mid-career-survey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/haas-brothers-uncanny-valley-lands-in-austin-with-a-playful-mid-career-survey\/","title":{"rendered":"Haas Brothers\u0019 \u0018Uncanny Valley\u0019 Lands in Austin with a Playful Mid-Career Survey"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Blanton Museum of Art, twins Nikolai and Simon Haas channel their imaginative, strange childhood visions into a large-scale presentation titled Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley<\/em>. Collaborating as the Haas Brothers since 2010, the Los Angeles artists are widely known for fantastical flora-and-fauna sculptures with a signature cheeky, surreal bent. In Austin, they gather figurative furniture, plush cartoonish characters, and illuminated installations that crystallize their idiosyncratic aesthetic.<\/p>\n

Previously on view at Cranbrook Art Museum and the Museum of Art and Design in New York, Uncanny Valley<\/em> marks the duo\u0019s first mid-career survey, bringing together their quirky, genre-defying works. The exhibition also nods to the brothers\u0019 childhood in Austin, where they lived from age 3 to 19, a span when the unofficial city slogan \u001cKeep Austin Weird\u001d took hold as a cultural ethos and early influence.<\/p>\n

Austin roots, Los Angeles practice<\/h2>\n

The presentation in Austin reflects the siblings\u0019 long-running interest in technology and its implications, often probing the uneasy meeting point between the artificial and the natural. Among the works on view is a brilliant, bizarre strawberry tree that seems transplanted from another planet into the gallery, a vivid emblem of the pair\u0019s fascination with hybrid forms and altered ecologies.<\/p>\n

Inside the \u001cuncanny valley\u001d<\/h2>\n

In a statement for the show, Simon Haas frames the exhibition\u0019s title as a key to their project: \u001cThe \u0019uncanny valley\u0019 generally refers to robotics, where empathy for a robot increases the more human you make it\u0014up to a point. 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\u0019s-eye view, the \u0019uncanny valley\u0019 came into focus as a core theme.\u001d The artists\u0019 illuminated, plush, and figurative creations embrace that logic, spiking familiarity with a dose of offbeat charm.<\/p>\n

Uncanny Valley<\/em> is on view in Austin through January 17, after which it travels to its final location, Mint Museum in Charlotte. An accompanying monograph of the same name is available on Bookshop.<\/p>\n

V\u00eda thisiscolossal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Blanton Museum of Art, Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley gathers Nikolai and Simon Haas\u2019s figurative furniture, plush cartoonish characters, and illuminated installations in the duo\u2019s first mid-career survey, on view in Austin through January 17 before traveling to Mint Museum in Charlotte.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-happening-now"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}