Artist Ariana Papademetropoulos Installs a 14-Foot Aquarium in Paris

Summary

 
• The exhibition features a 14-foot inhabitable aquarium where visitors can recline inside a glass enclosure accompanied by a custom soundtrack by Nicolas Godin of Air

 

• Marking her first solo show in France, the presentation at Thaddaeus Ropac Paris explores “Californian Occultism” through surrealist paintings and iridescent telephone booths

Ariana Papademetropoulos has brought her West Coast brand of “Californian Occultism” to the heart of the Marais. Marking her first solo exhibition in France, Glass Slipper is now on view at Thaddaeus Ropac Paris, transforming the gallery into a surrealist environment where hyperrealism and vaporwave aesthetics collide.

Central to the exhibition is “Water Based Treatment,” a massive, inhabitable aquarium that serves as a “heterotopia” within the gallery walls. Visitors are invited to climb inside the glass enclosure, reclining on a built-in mattress while listening to an ambient soundtrack composed by Nicolas Godin of the French duo Air. Surrounded by a shoal of shimmering “kissing fish,” the installation functions as both an intimate sanctuary and a theatrical stage.

Beyond the central tank, Papademetropoulos’s new large-scale paintings collapse the boundaries between interior and exterior worlds. Drawing on references ranging from *The Wizard of Oz* to Jungian psychology, the works depict domestic symbols—gingham dining chairs and Louis XV-style armchairs—adrift in volatile natural landscapes.

Upstairs, the artist moves into the realm of the “unapologetically artificial.” Three iridescent, shell-shaped telephone booths—inspired by the vintage interiors of the Tropicana hotel-casino in Las Vegas—hang from the walls. When the receivers are lifted, visitors can listen in on intimate recorded exchanges between the artist and her medium, further blurring the line between the physical world and the spectral. Complementing these are small-scale works depicting microwaves in various stages of combustion, reworking classical motifs like Correggio’s “Jupiter and Io” into the language of modern appliances.

By grounding quantum uncertainty and ancient mysticism within the theme, Glass Slipper reveals what Papademetropoulos calls the “fissures of the imagination,” those moments where the familiar world begins to crack and a magical world takes hold.

Glass Slipper is on view at Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Marais through April 11, 2026.

Thaddaeus Ropac
7 Rue Debelleyme
75003 Paris, France