Carlos Rolón/Dzine
I Tell You This Sincerely…
April 9–July 31, 2016
Chicago Culturel Center.
Bochinche, 2015.
About exhibition:
Internationally recognized for his elaborately crafted paintings, ornate sculptures and site-specific installations that incorporate social practice, Carlos Rolón/Dzine returns home for his first Chicago solo exhibition in 12 years. In some of his most personal work to date, several installations compose immersive environments that reflect the artist’s memories and distinctive biography while incorporating carefully crafted objects, paintings and sculptures – still playing with notions of conspicuous consumption and urban artifact.
Crystal Street, 2014.
Among the works debuting in Chicago is a large-scale installation dedicated to the tactility and performative qualities of boxing sport and culture. In a recreated blue collar trophy den, complete with wood paneling and vintage memorabilia, visitors can watch the historic NO MAS fight between Roberto Duran and Sugar Ray Leonard among trophy-inspired paintings and fabric works influenced by grandiose boxing apparel.
Nomadic Hustlerman Cart, 2015.
Bochinche creates a reimagined Caribbean courtyard and the beauty of social space before smartphones and social media. Guests are invited to gossip amongst themselves while sitting on marble benches surrounded by wrought iron sculptural work, handmade shell macramé, as well as never-before-seen floral oil paintings and shattered tempered glass works evoking the night sky.
African Gold, 2015.
In the newest body of work on view, Rolón references The Young Lords Puerto Rican activist movement of the 1960s through a super 8mm video installation, neon sculpture and an 8ft hot pink afro comb.
One of the highlights of the exhibition will be the return of the Nomadic Habitat (Hustleman) Cart, a collaboration with Chicago street vendor Garland Gantt. Originally created for the Chicago Architecture Biennial in connection with the Arts Incubator / Arts + Public Life program at the University of Chicago, the work brings the urban street into the white cube of the gallery with a readymade commercial cart enterprise. (text museum)
Gucci Mandala, 2013.
About:
Carlos Rolón/Dzine (b. 1970, Chicago, IL) attended Columbia College Chicago with a concentration in painting and drawing. Rolón has been recognized for his elaborately crafted paintings, ornate sculptures and works that come out of American, Latino and uniquely based subcultures. His studio practice investigates pop culture, craft, ritual, beauty and its relationship to art history, subculture, appropriation and the institution.
Untitled, 2015.
As a first-generation immigrant of Puerto Rican decent, the artist creates objects questioning the concept of luxury and craft making to explore questions of identity, integration and aspiration. His work also represents a detailed examination of curiosity and the process of art making and the cultures surrounding this. The work often addresses his biography by melding memory and the imaginary with carefully crafted, hybrid works that are playfully situated between the contradictory worlds of conspicuous consumption and urban artifact. The work is at once melancholic, excessive and exuberant, poised somewhere between celebration and regret. Rolón illuminates how the masculine can become delicate and the how the baroque can be minimal. The artist often channels this approach with site-specific installation work, vivid large-scale paintings and ornate sculptures in various materials expanding on ideas of self-reflection and imagined luxury. This approach questions not only cultural identity, but also its place within the confines of the institution. The works ultimately produce a hybrid language of social practice, painting and sculpture inviting the viewer to engage in discourse and discussion.(text website)