GLASS REVERIE

Lying in a bed inside an aquarium with peaceful music blasting in my ears, the world around me is slightly distorted as fish go by. There's an uncanny sense of calm. “That's what I wanted people to feel; it's supposed to be the ultimate relaxing experience.” That's what ARIANA PAPADEMETROPOULOS tells me right after I leave her installation piece, Water Based Treatment, the crowning jewel in her solo exhibit in Paris, Glass Slipper. I meet the Los Angeles-based artist inside the gallery Thaddaeus Ropac in the heart of the Marais. It's a beautiful morning, and the sun is shining through the windows of the monumental room Glass Slipper is in, framed as an altar in a surreal church. Large-scale paintings void of human presence are hung high. “I wanted it to feel like a religious space.”

Papademetropoulos walks me through the exhibit, carefully explaining the telephone booths where recordings of her conversation with a psychic can be heard and the multiple still life paintings of a microwave. It's a rare act for an artist, one that invites interpretation. “It's silly to think artists are meant to describe everything.” It's understandable; her work is deeply personal. Building on Jungian psychological archetypes and a mythological femininity, the artist explores parallel realms to our own. Glass Slipper, for example, documents the struggle to “find magic” during a hard time. Fortunately, here, Papademetropoulos lets us join in on the journey to discuss artistic freedom, astral traveling, and an artist's right not to explain their art.