Aria Dean’s Gut Punch 3 concludes the series first presented at the Whitney Biennial in 2022. This work exemplifies Dean’s exploration of sculpture, cinema, and technological critique through the fabrication of a luminous green monolith that appears to have been struck by an unseen force. The form began virtually, using 3D modeling software to animate the collision and capture the precise moment of impact—an act that blurs the boundaries between static object and dynamic event. 

The work’s vivid green hue references chroma key technology, a fundamental tool in film post-production used to superimpose backgrounds. Here, the color literalizes the idea of sculpture as a “site for projection,” suggesting how forms can serve as vessels for meaning and influence. The monolith also functions as a stand-in for Dean herself, confronting the tendency to cast Black women as sites for projection of external ideologies. Through this gesture, Gut Punch 3 interrogates notions of reality—questioning its subjective nature and its construction as a shared, universally understood truth. 

In Dean’s hands, the monolith becomes a meditation on the staged, illusory qualities at the heart of perception and representation.