Aria Dean, the visible (torso) world, 2024, Bronze and steel
32.5 x 31.25 x 20.5 in / 82.5 x 79.4 x 52 cm
Aria Dean, Facts Worth Knowing at Châeau Shatto gallery, Los Angeles, installation shot, 2024
Aria Dean, o, ye I encountered context exposed at the nape of your neck/stripped flat to hold space for your friends, 2024
Bronze 17.5 x 32.25 x 29.5 in / 44.5 x 83 x 74.9 cm
Images courtesy of the artist and Châeau Shatto, Los Angeles
Aria Dean integrates Rockstar Games/Team Bondi’s L.A. Noire into her artistic practice by extracting and manipulating digital models from the game, particularly representations of the set of D.W. Griffith’s film Intolerance. Her work explores the historical and cultural entanglement of objects, focusing on their representational systems and their transition from digital to physical mediums. In using L.A. Noire, she investigates the layered nature of visual models, such as the low poly surfaces typical of video games, and recontextualizes them within the broader history of illusionism, realism, and cinematic perception.
Dean’s practice is distinguished by her ability to interrogate and unsettle the boundaries between digital and physical, reality and fiction. By reconfiguring materials sourced from a video game, she challenges traditional sculptural forms and phenomenological experiences. Her work uniquely addresses the intersection of contemporary digital aesthetics and historical references, questioning how reality is constructed and understood within mediated spaces.
Aria Dean (b. 1993, Los Angeles, USA) is an artist, writer and filmmaker based in New York. Selected solo and group exhibitions of her work have been presented at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; Whitney Biennial 2022, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; REDCAT, Los Angeles; Made in L.A. 2020, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge; Tai Kwun, Hong Kong; Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Geneva; Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin; de Young Museum, San Francisco; and Knockdown Center, New York. Dean has delivered lectures and presentations at various universities and institutions, including Harvard University, Cambridge; Yale University, New Haven; California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Santa Clarita; The Studio Museum, Harlem; MMK Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt; Serpentine Galleries, London; New Museum, New York; DIA Art Foundation, New York. Dean’s writings have appeared in several publications, a selection of which are available as Bad Infinity, published by Sternberg Press in 2023.
LINK: Aria Dean
