Carlos Rolón

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.