At The BASS Museum in North Beach, Enjoy “Ferngully” by The Haas Brothers!

 

The Haas Brothers, twins Nikolai and Simon Haas, are artists/designers/creative producers based in Los Angeles. Their works of art and objects are situated between the contexts of art and design, frequently departing from the functional, and moving towards the exclusively sculptural. Playful and sometimes irreverent, they create furniture and sculptural objects in the form of anthropomorphic hairy chaises, fantastical beaded chairs and fungi, and hand-layered liquid clay accretion vases that explore themes of mathematics, science and nature, sexuality, nostalgia and social equity.

Their work is often born out of a collaborative process, working with craft guilds and other partners from around the world. They construct an imaginarium made up of monsters, beasts, flora and fauna, posting a link between the inherent functionality of nature through man-made forms. Their first solo museum exhibition, Ferngully, positions the viewer in an immersive environment that evokes cycles of renewal and rebirth found in nature.

The exhibition takes its title from the 1992 animated children’s film, “FernGully: The Last Rainforest.” Set within a magical rainforest, the film traces the adventure of two unlikely comrades, a fairy named Crysta and a lumberjack named Zak, as they work to save her home from devastation. Through the film’s lens of childhood innocence, the exhibition evokes a sense of wonderment, nostalgia and fantasy staged in a forest-like environment. Referencing the fantastical spirit of the film, the works on view are deeply rooted in the awe-inspiring and sublime qualities of the natural environment, removed from overt notions of advocacy.

At the entrance of Ferngully, the viewer is simultaneously welcomed and confronted by a crowd of beasts – an emblematic series in the brothers’ eight-year practice. The beasts are exquisitely crafted in sumptuous materials, such as black, white and rusty brown Icelandic sheepskin, curly cow fur, chocolate goat fur, gray Gotland sheep fur, carved ebony and cast bronze. Forms adorned with horns, tongues, feet and genitalia are accompanied by stupendously creative names like Uma Worm-an (2018), Hair Witch Project (2015) and Wee Wee Top (2017).

 

 

 

(Source – photos were taken by ARTS&FOOD® staff, with the permission of the museum.)

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