Espulsione dalla discoteca, 2020
Oil on canvas
90 x 120 inches (228.6 x 304.8 cm)
© Ariana Papademetropoulos; Photo by Flying Studio; Courtesy the artist and Vito Schnabel Gallery
“I really want my paintings to be like you’re going inside an opal,” the Los Angeles-based painter and curator Ariana Papademetropoulos said.
Papademetropoulos’s art, which has been exhibited at spaces including Vito Schnabel Gallery in New York, Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles, and Soft Opening in London, is often classified as “hyperrealistic,” “surrealist,” or “symbolist.” She paints large-scale interior scenes that include a shimmering portal into a slightly alternate reality. These portals open onto detailed renditions of shells, flower petals, and butterflies, which could be still-life paintings were it not for a feminine gazing eye at their center, or exterior landscapes invaded by outsized soap bubbles that reflect parallel worlds rather than their surroundings.