The Haas brothers seem like mystical ambassadors from the future. However, they are not here to portend of doom and gloom, like the current headlines may lead you to predict. Indeed, the future looks pretty bright according to Nikolai and Simon Haas โ fraternal twins who make high-end sculptural objects that only the very lucky can afford, but are almost talismanic in their complexity and humorous in their intentional simplicity. The materials the brothers use mimic natural and rare phenomena in nature. This gives their work a sexual energy that takes phallic and vaginal forms, replete with folds and shafts and rounded curves that could make the prudish contingent quite sensitive. Put the work together and it looks like a combination of Maurice Sendak's menagerie of Wild Things and Dr. Seuss on too many tabs of acid.
If you visit the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles, you can see some of their drawings on the walls of the Chapter Restaurant; next to the lobby. Portraits of Roman Polanski are juxtaposed next to chubby line-drawn creatures holding cocktail glasses โ Nikolaiโs work is more cartoonish, one dimensional and comical, while Simonโs work is more realistic, detailed and has more perspective. Itโs a perfect way to experience their work on an individual scale. But it is when they bring their styles together that the real magic happens. Simon comes from a much more logical perspective, while Niki is much more laid back, creating an incredibly powerful dynamic.
Over the last couple of years, the Haas brothers have been riding high on a wave of popularity โ a collaboration with Donatella Versace took their works straight to the gilded living rooms of the fashion and design world. Solo exhibitions in New York have made them darlings in the art world. However, the proverbial wave crashed when they were on a private jet heading back to LA from an exhibition of their work in Miami.
To fill their souls again, they have been working with a group of bead artists located in a township outside of Cape Town, in South Africa, who call themselves the "Haas Sisters." This week at Design Miami, the brothers will be premiering works from this collaboration, entitled Afreaks, which include colorful four legged creatures in varying sizes and large psychedelic mushrooms โ more examples of the Haas Brothers, and now Sisters, goal to spread positive vibes. The work will also be on view this February at Cooper Hewitt's Design Triennial.
In the following interview, we talk to the Haas Brothers about their craft, their collaborative relationship, the sexual overtones of their work and how a trip to Africa changed everything.
AUTRE: When did you first start collaborating artistically together? Was there a specific moment when you knew you wanted to make this happen together?
NIKOLAI: My first remembrance of doing stuff together was when we wanted to make these machines. There was a popular artist at the time who made these rolling ball sculptures. We saw that as kids, and we wanted to make this machine in the backyard. We were about 3 or 4.
SIMON: Our very first collaboration started in 2007. He was in a band with Vincent Gallo, and they were touring. I was in school, and they called me and asked me to tour with them. I dropped out and drove to LA to join them.
NIKOLAI: That was our first professional collaboration.
SIMON: Then a friend of ours offered Niki this construction job in 2010, and he asked me to do it with him. We rented a studio downtown. Basically, thatโs when we knew that we were going to be working together always. We actually had a conversation about it. We rented that shop, and we didnโt know what to do.
NICKOLAI: In this conversation, we were asking ourselves, โWhat are we starting a business for?โ We just want to work for ourselves and do our own thing. I donโt think we said it explicitly at the time, but we knew we were dedicated just to being happy people. That was the spirit of what was going on. I remember when we sat down and talked about what we were going to achieve, that was the number one thingโbeing happy, and trying to spread that in our community. Not just the people who we were working with in the studio, but also in the communities outside of the studio, the LA community.
AUTRE: And the rest of the world as well?
NIKI: Yeah, as much as possible. We have a community in Miami now because we go there all the time. We have a community in Europe because we go there all the time. The whole point is to be happy.
AUTRE: When you collaborate on a piece together, where does it start? Is there a brainstorming session?
NIKI: Itโs different every time. I think our most explicitly collaborative moments are when we have to sit down and conceive new shows together. On single pieces, weโre collaborating all the timeโasking each other questions as we go. Simonโs always working on the philosophy and the deeper meaning behind the work, and heโs always thinking about how the work can change. Iโm kind of doing more brutish work, like sculpting or sketching cartoons.
SIMON: Heโs the maker, and Iโm just testing stuff all the time. Iโm a fanatic; Iโm a materials person. The way we collaborate is Niki gives life to these processes, and I give him materials to work with. And we always talk about all of it the entire time. Also, as twins, weโre on the same track.
NIKI: Itโs not just the conception of the piece. The collaboration doesnโt stop. The African project is such a good example. The actual objects themselves are just a result of the real important part of the project, which is the philosophy of the book. Hopefully people read it. Thatโs the kind of project that people will put in history books if they read what Simon has written.
SIMON: Itโs basically a feminist, white privilege project thatโs wrapped up into something consumable and pretty. Thatโs the thingโour audience is the 1%. Weโre delivering things to them to make them think. Itโs not something they would necessarily pick up on the shelf. We get to put this stuff in there to kind of figure out later. We talk about ourselves as entering more into philosophy in that way.
AUTRE: Thatโs really interesting. My next question was about luxury and the definition of luxury.
NIKI: To be honest, most people who are living luxurious lives have pretty bad situations. Thereโs something about wealth where it gets to a certain level, and it starts to dehumanize the person. They perceive themselves as an odd commodity, even though they trust themselves more than anyone else. Luxury, honestly, is being as happy as you possibly can be. Thereโs a sweet spot where you have enough to support what you want to do. At the same time, you are loose enough that you can say, โFuck this.โ If you have to get work, if you have to write contractsโeven if youโre making thousands of dollars, itโs not all that luxurious. Youโre under your own thumb.
SIMON: Luxury as people understand it is almost like a prison. You go to basically the same hotels and the same restaurants in every country in the world. Someone who is living luxuriously is having the same experience everywhere. Youโre getting the Vegas experience all over the world.
NIKI: The Hollywood hotel, the concierge that takes care of everything for you. If we had gone to Cape Town in the luxurious way, we would have been taking crazy advantage of black people. We would have been ignoring the entire context of the point of being there. We would have barred ourselves from doing this project.
AUTRE: Luxury, in a sense, can also mean the freedom to be creative.
NIKI: We have the luxury to do whatever we want. Thatโs what Iโm looking for. The luxury to allow ourselves to be happy. We want to be curious all the time, and we want to explore that curiosity. Thatโs the luxury weโre after.
AUTRE: You have the capability to work in this small format, and then you can explore all those ideas that were in your head.
NIKI: We talked about supporting our community. We were telling kids that the guy that hired us for this first time said, โHey, Iโm giving you the ability to start expressing yourself.โ Thatโs how we started making our stuff. Later on, our gallery said, โHey, make whatever you want.โ That was a big moment for us. We werenโt making anything cool before that really. Money and space doesnโt make you very happy. I would actually say I was just as happy when I was 18 years old and broke.
AUTRE: I want to talk about sexuality, because thatโs a major part of your work, especially in your drawings.
NIKI: The sexuality, to me, is just the reality of being a person. Everybody thinks about sex. Everybody has sexual organs. It does occur a lot in the sketches in particular. In the rest of our work, it appears about as often as it does in everyday life. You see yourself clothed, and then at the end of the day, youโre naked looking at your own dick. The way that I push sexuality in the cartoons and the way I use it in art work (like the sex room we made a couple of Basels ago), the point is to make it seem like less of a shock. It is simply an innocent expression if itโs done well. Obviously, if not, it can be oppressive. Itโs all happiness. Itโs an extension of being a person. The point of using it in our work is the idea of leveling the playing field.
SIMON: Itโs so positive. Tom of Finland was more centered on the erotic. The idea behind this is positivity. Thereโs a very positive message. Beyond that, we focus a lot on animals too. Animals and sex are really common themes throughout history, design, and art (which were the same things until recently). We feel like itโs a natural interest. Itโs whatโs around us. To exclude it from the work is almost weirder. I was in drawing classes at RISD, and there would be people doing life drawing classes who would leave out the penis. That creeps me out. Showing it is not creepy. Taking it out, showing me your thought process, is kind of creepy.
AUTRE: Thereโs so much shame attached to sexuality in our culture.
NIKI: We are vehemently anti-shame. Thatโs one of the pillars that Simon set up for our ethos very early on. Any time we sit down to do a piece of work or a show, we make sure to follow these guidelines we made for our studio.
SIMON: The first few sexual pieces, people would come up to us and say, โOh my god, you canโt show that.โ Thatโs shaming. Weโre not going to listen to them. Itโs because of their own discomfort. We made a piece for Basel about sex and shame. People would enter through this giant vagina. We like to get people to consider their own thought processes as theyโre experiencing these things. I think itโs important.
AUTRE: It is important. There is a lot of censorship going on these days, like with Instagram.
SIMON: The fact that you canโt show nipples on Instagram pisses me off. The nipple canโt be free; thatโs so stupid.
NIKI: Weโre not trying to be shocking when we talk about sexuality. People think weโre sensationalist and shocking, but really weโre just expressing what we think.
AUTRE: Do you ever have creative disagreements? How do you resolve them?
SIMON: We have, though itโs kind of rare. We had a big fight in Cape Town, but that wasnโt creative.
NIKI: Talking to each other creatively, we take each other seriously. If Simon doesnโt like something Iโm coming up with, or if I donโt like something heโs coming up with, we just try to explore it with each other. You probably have a point, letโs find what it is. Our creative fluidity is beyond good.
SIMON: In school, I had critiques by some teachers who had chips on their shoulders. It was so obvious. They will give shaming critiques of work. We donโt do that to each other. It stunts your creative growth so much. We understand that if one of us shits on the other oneโs piece, heโll stop exploring it and be afraid to do it. I know that his output is going to be incredible, so I have to trust it, and vice versa. The biggest fight we had was in Cape Town, and it came only because we were both going through so much. Weโd been riding this crazy high from getting pretty successful pretty fast, and it kind of hit us. When we were in Cape Town and working with these women who had so little, it was like, โWhat am I doing?โ Both of us were going through internal turmoil, which caused us to have a big fight.
NIKI: There were also a bunch of reasons why we had to flesh things out. After the fight, it ended up so much better. It was so worth it. That was the first time we ever had a fight. Itโs crazy. Literally, if you talk about the moment before we went to Africa, we had our first solo show in New York. It was met with tremendous success; we sold everything.
AUTRE: Was that R & Company?
NIKI: Yeah. We were hanging out with collectors and all that bullshit. We were staying at a friendโs penthouse. We were taking ecstasy and listening to soul music, and it was so fun. I donโt feel bad for doing it at all; it was unbelievable. But then we go from this moment of complete pleasure and excess to being dumped in Kairicha. We set that up for ourselves, but it was a good reality check. Fuck. Who gives a shit about what we just did? I was proud that we did that, we worked really fucking hard. But weโre young white men. We grew up knowing A-list celebrities. Half of this, whether we like it or not, was handed to us. Suddenly we're working with black women in Kairicha where black people still donโt have the same rights, they are not being given any chances. When we came into the picture, we did a small fair in South Africa, it was the first time they had ever been to the townโs center. That was the first time they got to go to a fancy event.
SIMON: And the crowd that came in was shocked that they were all in there, and as the artists especially. It was really cool.
NIKI: People say itโs not racist in South Africa, but then you try to take them all out to a sushi restaurant, and you canโt do it.
AUTRE: It seems embedded.
SIMON: Theyโre like, how about going to KFC and going to the top of the hill instead? We actually wound up doing that, and there were people taking photos of us. It was so bizarre.
NIKI: You have to realize, though, that thatโs how these people grew up. Thatโs what itโs like in South Africa, white or black. The whole black community has its own issues with intolerance too. Theyโre super intolerant with gay people. Itโs all fucked up. What we have to understand is that everyone growing up there has grown up with a certain social structure. The idea of ignorance really comes into play. Culturally, people were brought up in an ignorant way. We want people to understand that you donโt want to isolate people youโre hoping to change. If you do that, nothingโs going to happen. And everybody, as evil as they may seem (and I donโt even believe in the idea of evil), nobody is actually evil. Everyone is a person deep down inside. Whatever it is that theyโre reacting to, if theyโre acting in a way thatโs full of shit, like demeaning a person because of their skin colorโI believe that they are fully capable of dropping that. It takes time. I think that the Internet is the biggest purge of that of all time. All of a sudden, nobody on the Internet community seems tolerant of homophobia or racism. As a mirror of society, you see society not willing to tolerate that anymore. The Internet touches about 80% of their lives. Thatโs great. They all have cell phones and listen to Beyoncรฉ and One Direction. But the thing is, Beyoncรฉ is not homophobic or racist. When you have idols that are being put in front of people like that, itโs only a matter of time before it melts away. In fact, anybody who is younger than us is not an issue. You just have to wait for the old people to die away. Although, Iโm sure there are some people carrying the torch who are younger.
AUTRE: A lot of people donโt get that reality check. They go to the developing world, but thereโs no reality check.
SIMON: You turn into a monster. I felt myself turning into a sharky monster before we went to Cape Town. I was noticing changes in my behavior. Like, I was totally okay with being an asshole to somebody. Thatโs not like me, and it started to bother me a lot. Thank god we went to Cape Town; it hit us so hard. I remember, right after Cape Town, we went to Miami. We wound up in a G7 flying back here, and I could not enjoy myself. It felt brutal.
NIKI: These pieces of art are selling for thousands of dollars. At some point, itโs too much money. Nothing is worth that much. I know some of our stuff is stupid expensive. But the point is that itโs feeding something much bigger. Weโre trying to bring it back to the community.
AUTRE: With you guys, thereโs craftsmanship.
SIMON: There are definitely reasons why our stuff is expensive.
NIKI: If thereโs an art piece that has historical value, but all thatโs happening with it is the piece being taken and used as a commodity. Itโs dehumanizing. Itโs been moved around in the market with a shitload of money on it. No one needs something that costs that much.
AUTRE: How did the project in Africa come about?
SIMON: Cape Town was named world design capital, and we went for a fair to show some of our pieces. When we got there, we were being tourists looking for art in South Africa, where everything is totally whitewashed. We went to this craft fair, and there was this booth with really cool beaded animals. The woman in the booth was so fascinating and cool and making these beautiful pieces. We just loved her and her story. The booth is called Monkey Biz. On each piece, they have a tag with the name of the woman who made it. We thought that was amazing, because that doesnโt happen very often. Itโs a small thing, but itโs actually a really big thing. Thatโs what got us to want to start doing it. We had this whole penpal exchange with this womanโMontepeloโand her team for about a year, and she really wanted us to come. We showed up and started working with them. They were all afraid of working with us, actually. Theyโre used to being treated poorly. As soon as they realized we werenโt on that track, it became this really awesome community building experience.
AUTRE: When will those pieces be shown?
SIMON: In December. December 4th.
AUTRE: So thatโs your next major project?
NIKI: Yes. And we have another show in February.
SIMON: The theme is beauty.
NIKI: Weโre trying to transgress beauty. Weโre trying to get rid of our exclusive authorship.
SIMON: Jeff Koons would never name all the fabricators that worked on his project. Thatโs what weโre trying to transgress. I think itโs kind of cool.
AUTRE: Design and fine artโwhere is that line?
SIMON: The line is the people who are going to make money off of it. Itโs completely commercial. Also, the word โdesignโ is completely Western and very modern. There was never a distinction between the two until recently in our culture. Itโs so location and time based that we find it to be gross. We donโt really make that distinction.
NIKI: At the same time, weโre proud to be a part of whatโs considered the design community. The truth is, weโre just doing what we do. No labels, man.
SIMON: We rose up through the design world, but we are contentious there. As our stuff is being thought of more as art, the design fair has tried to push us out. Art Basel and Design Miami are the same thing, but they donโt know what side our work should be on.
NIKI: Design Miami has been trying to push us out because weโre โart.โ
SIMON: That actually happened with this Cape Town project. We had to appeal and fight for the right to get into it. They told our gallery that they couldnโt show it unless they had us in that booth.
NIKI: The design line exists only in the eyes of the people of commerce.
AUTRE: What do you think will change things?
NIKI: Itโs already happening. The Internet, again, is leveling everything. Hashtags have become more important than library cardstock. The way that people think about design now is like library cardstock. The hashtag is going to take over. People in our generation donโt give a shit. People who are old have dedicated time to a certain way of life, and theyโre really resistant to changing that way of life. But the truth is, theyโre old, and they donโt know what the fuck theyโre talking about.
SIMON: The reason why it hasnโt already changed is literally money, government, etc. But that will go away, and it will all be much chiller. Itโs clear from looking at the Internet whatโs going to happen. Growing up gay in Texas, I saw very few people who were out in the public eye. The best I could get was Queer Eye for the Straight Guy on TV. Now, on the Internet, you can see whatever you want. Everything is going to change.
You can see the Haas Brothers' "Afreaks" this week at the R & Company booth at Design Miami opening on December 2nd. You will also be able to see the work at Cooper Hewitt's Design Triennial, which will open on February 12, 2016 and will run until August 21, 2016. Purchase the "Afreaks" book here. text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper and Summer Bowie. photographs by Sara Clarken
