Maria Papadimitriou’s new temporary exhibition at the Art Lounge of NEW Hotel engages in a dialogue with myth, erotic energy, and the imagined dimensions of feminine identity. Papadimitriou creates a universe of fragmented images sourced from vintage Playboy issues, reversing the stereotypical male gaze and reconstructing the female form as an archetypal, almost sacred presence. This is a body of work that transcends logic and the earthly, venturing into the irrational and existential: woman is not presented as object, but as a complex being—simultaneously fragmented and reborn. In a world permeated by the madness of failure, Papadimitriou offers a visual refuge—a space where erotic tension, imagination, and transformation become catalysts for discovering a deeper inner truth.

Fragmented Bodies

One of the first “messy” questions Papadimitriou poses to hotel guests is this: Is love truly "melter of limbs", as Sappho writes in Fragment 130? That is, does eros dissolve the body—representing both supreme pleasure and fragmentation?  Like an imposing, hypnotic witch from the Middle Ages, Papadimitriou began to unite, in a paradoxical and (almost) uncontrollable way, the erotic fragments she herself had created.

These fragmented desires became the essence of an existential awakening. The library of the art lounge becomes a refuge for desires and fantasies through a chaos of forms that reflects the inability of the Ego to control them. Bodies intertwine without clear identity, suggesting that love is dispersion, risky openness, touch, rupture. Each work resembles a small erotic explosion without duration or logic. An initiation into Papadimitriou's imaginary absurdity.

Insanity or Dépassement

The hallway of the art lounge is transformed into a wet cave—a place of transcendence—where the artist juxtaposes mythical, demonic figures. Women wearing masks—shields, animal horns, wrapped in ivy roots, petrified in time. On the leather wallpaper, Papadimitriou's modern nymphs emerge as figures of momentary hesitation in the face of eternal transformation and erotic desire, attempting to embody an “other” world, outside of order and reason. Women shed their skin, they are not confined to forms or roles, they act as a mirror of the imaginary transformation of humans themselves and of the world.

Irony, self-reflexive humor, and identity crisis are fundamental elements in Papadimitriou's work. The concept of identity becomes fluid, ambiguous, and often in crisis. What she calls “failure”, and for this very reason keeps open the possibility of a “return”, of another horizon, becomes the vital nourishment of desire. The “insanity of failure” is never a ‘minus’ but a potential “plus.” A prerequisite for accepting the Other. “Women,” says the artist, “grounded me, taught me reality. What I present here are our bodies as a field of learning, as a place of return.”

After some time, Maria Papadimitriou presents a new body of work and revisits the theme of the composite image, confronts myth and transformation in a world overwhelmed by uncertainty, neurosis, and the anxiety of failure.
“To be an artist is to fail as no other dare fail.”
— Samuel Beckett, Transition, 48, 1949

Curated by: Maria Kasimati-Tsoutsia
Exhibition Dates: June – September 2025
Venue: NEW Hotel, 16 Filellinon St. & 1 Navarchou Nikodimou (entrance via Navarchou Nikodimou)