Ariana Papademetropoulos : The man who saved a dog from an imaginary fire

Wilding Cran Gallery is pleased to present The man who saved a dog from an imaginary fire, a solo presentation of work by Los Angeles based artist Ariana Papademetropoulos. Taking inspiration from imagined spaces, vintage magazines, and books, Papademetropoulos creates environments that juxtapose ideas of perception and delusion. By using both realism and trompe l'oeil she references the history of painting while further developing the sense of illusion within her work.

Featuring new paintings and installation, this exhibition focuses on our relationship to decor and interior space- it invites us to question functionality and taste, reality and fantasy. In a painting of a church interior the walls blur to the outside where the viewer is transported to a ‘Disneyfied’ realm; a room built into the gallery space takes us ‘down the rabbit hole’ to a topsy-turvy fantasy interior of distorted scale which has us wondering whether it is retreat, asylum or even a gilded cage.

Finally, the artist brings together a collection of gothic romance novels, all written by women. Each paperback has a different title and a different story, yet all of the book covers share the common theme of a woman running out of a house from a presumed horrific fate. With this, she invites the viewer to confront the contradictions of fantasy vs horror, and ultimately the duplicity and hypocrisy within our popular culture.

Ariana Papademetropoulos (b. 1990, Los Angeles, CA) received her BFA at CalArts with a minor in Cultural Studies in 2012. She also studied at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Her work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, New York City, New Orleans, Mexico City, and Berlin.