Haas brothers

The Haas Brothers began developing their Accretion technique more than a decade ago, inspired by the layered accumulation process found throughout the natural world—in coral, in tree fungus, in cave formations. While the Accretions began as small ceramic objects, the process lends itself to the labor-intensive, cross-disciplinary material innovations for which the Haas Brothers are renowned. Over the

past ten years, the pair translated the Accretions first to bronze and most recently into painting.

Accretion Paintings begin as a predetermined set of rules—draw this shape, make that line—that the artists repeat using squeeze bottles of acrylic paint, building up over time to create richly textured, three-dimensional surfaces. The Haas Brothers paint the canvases by hand, following the same pattern again and again; their forms taking on the imperfections inherent to a human process, as in the way a story, told over and over, takes on new details and meanings. Both time and labor-intensive, the Accretions—in all their material forms—embody the Haas Brothers’ almost obsessive investment in process, a meditative celebration of human artistic creation as defined systems and the laws of physics yield to unexpected beauty.

25 x 36 x 3 inches.

62.9 x 91.4 x 7.6 cm.

Courtesy of the Artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery