Carlos Rolón

b. 1970

Born in Chicago, Illinois, 1970; Lives and works in Chicago, Illinois

What has always motivated me is to create work so that I can see "myself" or a story I can relate to as a young Latino born and raised in Chicago in a blue-collar setting. Someone who deals with conflict of identity. — Carlos Rolón

Artwork

Exhibitions

03.16–08.26.2018
Outside/In
New Orleans Museum of Art

Carlos Rolón

05.06–08.28.2016
Vintage Voyages and Atomic Memories
Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit

Carlos Rolón

01.21–03.01.2014
Born, Carlos Rolón
Salon 94 Bowery

Carlos Rolón

09.07–10.23.2011
Imperial Nail Salon
Freeman Alley

Carlos Rolón

Biography

Carlos Rolón (b. 1970), also known as DZINE, is a multidisciplinary artist whose work interrogates themes of craft, ritual, beauty, spirituality, and identity—largely as they relate to the canon of art history and the ways in which institutions perpetuate ideas of supremacy and exoticism. While the artist’s practice oscillates between painting, sculpture, and installation, and utilizes a wide array of material and references, Rolón is unwavering in his fascination with the aesthetics of middle-class dwellings, particularly within the Latinx community (Rolón comes from a Puerto Rican background but was raised in Chicago). At the core of Rolón’s body of work is an engagement with the relationship between cultivated space and social barriers within a postcolonial framework.

Recent solo exhibitions of Rolón’s work include Outside/In at the New Orleans Museum of Art (LA) in 2018; Tropicaliza at the Museo de Arte de Ponce (PR) in 2016; and Vintage Voyages and Atomic Memories in Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (MI) in 2016. Recent group exhibitions include Open Storage: Selections from the Collection & Works on Loan at the Bass Museum of Art, Miami (FL) in 2020; The Times at the Flag Art Foundation, New York (NY) in 2017; Body Embellishment at the Mint Museum, Charlotte (NC) in 2015; and Homebodies, curated by Naomi Beckwith, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (IL) in 2013. In 2007 the artist represented Ukraine in the 52nd Venice Biennale.

Rolón’s work is included in the collections of the Bass Museum of Art, Miami (FL); the Brooklyn Museum (NY); Museo del Barrio, New York (NY); the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (CA); the New Orleans Museum of Art (LA); and the Pensacola Museum of Art (FL), among others.


CV

Press

04.21.2020
Checking In: Carlos Rolón Embraces Memory, Migration, and Living in the Moment
Eliza Jordan

Whitewall

05.24.2018
A Golden Critique of Colonialism
Sarah Rose Sharp

Hyperallergic

05.30.2014
Dzine Offers an Artistic History of Boxing, From the Greeks to the Pay-Per-View
William Van Meter

The New York Times: T Magazine

01.01.2009
Dzine: Deitch Studios
Stephanie Gonzalez-Turner

Art in America

07.01.2007
Dzine: Pussy and Pancakes
Joey Garfield

Juxtapoz