“It’s a big part of my work – architecture and interior design. A lot of people in my family are architects so I’ve always considered space and architecture as a kind of installation where you’re creating your home for whatever you want to pretend that you are. I always want to see new things.”
—Ariana Papademetropoulos
Los Angeles born multidisciplinary artist Ariana Papademetropoulos is known for her large-scale scenes which create a shimmering view of a slightly alternate reality. Rooted in hyperrealism and illusion, Papademetropoulos reinterprets traditional iconography and symbolism as she incorporates them into her own contemporary narratives.
In 2018, Glass Slipper was exhibited in Sunken Garden at London’s Soft Opening gallery, which invited viewers into a surreal world of seductive domesticity, with paintings which evoked a dreamlike catalogue of a post-war Americana. Raised by architects, Papademetropoulos used Los Angeles streetscapes and architecture to explore how visual representation can construct identity. Her upbringing is apparent in her intimate understanding of space and the ways it can influence mood, breathing life and emotion into an uninhabited interior scene. Asserting that the large variety of architectural styles in Los Angeles demonstrates how easily we erect our surroundings based on how we desire to be perceived by others as well as our ideal selves, the exhibition sought to explore how once this architecture was created, the fabricated identities they represent become reality.
Glass Slipper imagines an idyllic Californian interior warped in a balmy yellow haze. The psychedelic shift in hue and distorted shapes that Papademetropoulos depicts within the large water stain disrupts the familiar domestic scene, emphasising the constructed nature of the interior and the identity it represents. The view outside of the window is obscured by vibrant blue hues, separating the carefully curated interior from the natural world.
“At the moment, I’m focusing on this series of watermark paintings, where I pour water onto found images so it looks like a mistake—it turns into this recorded moment, instead of just a painting. It’s kind of psychedelic.”
—Ariana Papademetropoulos To create her interior scenes, Papademetropoulos begins by printing out a photograph from a magazine and spilling water over a portion of it. The result is a bleeding ink that is slightly altered from the original composition, with the edges displaying an iridescent gradient the same way that water bleeds ink. Reproduced in oil, the gradient of the spill creates a vibrant border between the representational and the artificial, encouraging the viewer to question the reality of the scene and the layers of artifice in the way we construct and communicate identities. Within the elaborate, unoccupied interiors of paintings such as Glass Slipper, the everyday alchemy of the water spills become an organic presence in the composition, acting as a mediation between the otherworldly and the tangible.
