New Yorkers strolling past Columbus Circle recently might feel a sudden pull toward the surreal—and rest assured, you aren’t imagining things.
The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) has officially been transformed into a whimsical, sci-fi dreamscape courtesy of the twin design duo Nikolai and Simon Haas.
Their latest exhibition, Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley, marks the artists’ largest museum survey to date, packing the gallery floors with 85 original, handcrafted works that blur the lines between high-end luxury design, contemporary art, and a Pixar-meets-Tim-Burton animation.
Visitors are stepping out of Manhattan and straight into a vibrant dimension populated by giant furry beasts, multi-eyed mutants, and glowing digital landscapes.
The mind-bending concept behind the “monsters”
While the exhibition looks like a beautifully chaotic fever dream, there is a brilliant psychological theory grounding the madness. T
he title borrows from the “uncanny valley”—a robotics phenomenon where a robot becomes so close to looking human that our natural empathy suddenly plummets into revulsion.
According to Simon Haas, the secret weapon to beating that creepy feeling is a heavy dose of charm:
“The solution for this is to add cuteness: when a robot is humanoid with an extra dose of cute, 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.”
The brothers channel this by taking functional design objects and anthropomorphizing them—like giving a metallic table an intentional, humorous personality.
The result? A room full of alien-like creatures that somehow feel incredibly empathetic, touchable, and deeply funny.
Mind-boggling craftsmanship meets high math
Don’t let the playful humor fool you; the technical rigor behind these pieces is absolutely staggering.
The Haas Brothers mix Simon’s analytical mind for systems and mathematics with Nikolai’s irreverent creativity.
Here is a taste of the incredible craftsmanship you’ll see up close:
- The Beasts Series: Zoomorphic sculptures dripping in thick fur, porcelain tusks, and bronze accents that radiate pure personality.
- Hundreds of Thousands of Venetian Beads: The exhibition features towering, intricately beaded plant sculptures. To create them, Simon uses rigid mathematical formulas (like Fibonacci progressions) to figure out how to weave antique glass beads so they naturally curve exactly like real-world flora.
- The Accretion Ceramics & Paintings: Mimicking the organic growth patterns of coral and tree fungus, these works are built up over thousands of meticulous, repetitive applications—using wet clay on ceramics or squeeze bottles of acrylic paint to create richly textured, three-dimensional canvases.
- Futuristic Digital Art: Algorithmically generated landscapes rooted in ’90s computer graphics glow from the walls, framing the physical creatures in a completely immersive environment.
Double the art: a Chelsea companion exhibit
If you can’t get enough of the Haas brothers’ distinctive universe, you’re in luck.
In tandem with the major museum survey at MAD, a monumental companion piece titled The Strawberry Tree (2023) is on display over at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in Chelsea.
This massive cast-bronze tree features hand-beaded blue foliage (crafted in partnership with a community of women in Lost Hills, CA) and glowing, hand-blown pink glass strawberries.
📍 Location: Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), 2 Columbus Circle
🕒 Dates: On view now through August 16, 2026
🎟️ Tickets: $20 per person (Kids under 4 are free!). Available at the door or via their online booking system.
