Gawking half-beings, frenzied packs of dogs, and screeching zebras come together in Sebastian Maas' latest pictures. The Berlin-based artist was among the first artists to join HELDENREIZER Contemporary and has been a permanent fixture in the gallery's program for years. As the main act at this year's Open Art Gallery Weekend, he is showing a milestone in his young oeuvre, grabbing visitors by the nostalgically heavy heart and squeezing so tightly that it is unclear whether it pleases or hurts. His visual vocabulary uses a thoroughly occupied, firmly established, and generally appreciated motif from the solid repertoire of art history. With skillful and pointed settings, Maas turns it into a suspenseful revue of current events. In Die große Umarmung (The Great Embrance) (2024), for example, pink areas of color slide onto the back of a life-size zebra and smile shyly at the viewer. An abstract creature forms, oscillating somewhere between predator and warm blanket, while pastel coziness meets colonial chic, a sense of home, and precise pop dilettantism. Sebastian Maas invites us to question our aesthetic and moral identity and develop a fashion- and culture-critical maturity.