CARLOS ROLÓN/DZINE

In the past several years, Rolón has been recognized for his elaborately crafted paintings, ornate sculptures and works that come out of Kustom Kulture. His studio practice investigates pop culture, craft, ritual, beauty, spirituality, and identity and its relationship to art history, subculture, appropriation and the institution. The work often addresses his own biography in relationship to his Puerto Rican heritage and U.S. upbringing. The carefully crafted, hybrid works 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 how the baroque can be minimal.

The artist has had solo exhibitions at The Dallas Contemporary, Dallas; Bass Museum of Art, Miami; Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico; and CAM Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis. His work has also been exhibited in group shows at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Marta Herford Museum, Herford, Germany; Museum Het Domein, Sittard, The Netherlands; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Museo del Barrio, New York and Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno (CAAM), Canary Islands. In 2007 Rolón represented Ukraine in the 52nd Venice Biennale. He is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation award for Painting and Sculpture.

Rolón’s work is included in the following public collections: Bass Museum of Art, Miami; Brooklyn Museum, New York; City of Chicago Public Art Collection; Museo del Barrio, New York; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico; Museum Het Domein, Sittard, The Netherlands; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; and Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev, Ukraine, among others.

Courtesy Pearl Lam Projects