SEBASTIAN MAAS
STILL HUMAN

As human beings, we are acutely aware of the physical world and our place in it. Indeed, we cling to the sensations of flesh and blood – being hungry or cold or aroused or sleepy – in the face of the advances of AI, which challenge human exceptionalism. If a robot can beat us at Go, at least it won’t know what it feels like to stub a toe on a rock. At the same time, of course, humans are the originators and creators of artifice – including, indeed, artificial intelligence. What are the implications of this for depictions of reality and for the creation of real emotional states?
 

It’s into this space – the tension created by the artificial creation of something real; the evocation of emotional truth through masterful artifice – that Sebastian Maas steps, in this major new show for Heldenreizer gallery.
 

The exhibition is titled Still Human and, in its paintings, human beings are much in evidence: reclining on blankets; surrounded by picnics; in earnest or playful discussions with each other. The mood is one of suspension between worlds – between daylight and darkness, between conversation and contemplation, between the sensuous and the spiritual. It looks and feels entirely spontaneous and natural. In fact, however, the scene is anything but: what we are looking at is the portrayal of an artfully curated symposium, in which every aspect – from the participants, to the season of the year, to the time of day, to the topics of conversation, to the musical background and even the refreshments – was carefully selected in order to provoke a particular atmosphere, mood and state of emotional awareness. Even the venue – Munich’s English Garden – is itself an expert facsimile of a ‘natural’ landscape.
 

In creating this space, Sebastian Maas goes back to earlier proponents of painterly ‘special effects’, including Baroque masters of chiaroscuro, as well as to other expert creators of mood, such as the French and American Impressionists. That these paintings are sometimes seen nowadays as kitsch is valuable for the artist, who relishes its ability to foreground the artifice of the works. 
 

Elsewhere in the exhibition the interaction between artifice and reality – and the role one plays in the creation of the other – is also evident. Sebastian Maas has chosen to represent a drag artist at a particular moment of transformation into the drag persona. The full illusion is not yet embodied, so that the viewer glimpses the fine, shimmering line of tension between reality and artifice, between day and night, between personality and alter ego. 
 

In the constant interplay of real and artificial, Sebastian Maas remains elusive, unwilling to take sides and instead keen to confront us – sensuous and emotional beings as humans are – with the ways in which our emotions can be manipulated and with the very real pleasure that comes from surrendering to that manipulation.