Ariana Papademetropoulos
She Sells, 2018
Oil on canvas
© Ariana Papademetropoulos
The artist invites viewers into her uncanny universe with a dual show in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles artist Ariana Papademetropoulos will lure you into a painted fairy tale—one that hovers winkingly between the romantic and the foreboding. Papademetropoulos, who is 30 and was born and raised in Pasadena, makes seductively beautiful, large-scale paintings that brim with the symbols and attributes of girlhood, Hollywood, and a very Southern California brand of the occult. Four-poster beds, unicorns, and glistening soap bubbles that call to mind Glinda the Good Witch all make appearances. A meticulous technician, Papademetropoulos’s works are often described as hyper-realistic, yet the canvases are the first to signal their own illusory nature, with trompe-l’oeil watermarks or torn edges offering viewers a path into or out of her dreamlike universes.