Intersect Chicago Curatorial Selections: Carlos Rolón

Known for his multi-disciplinary practice whose work employs a wide range of media to explore themes of craft, ritual, beauty, spirituality, identity and its relationship to art history and the institution. Born to a Puerto-Rican family, Rolón’s background allows the artist to explore personal ideas which directly deal with questions of inclusion, aspiration and cultural identity. Unabashedly allowing beauty, class, race and landscape into question. Often connecting childhood memories, the artist bore witness to the ways in which households have adapted to new American middle-class lifestyles. Transforming these vantage points into a hybrid language of painting, sculpture, social practice and site-specific installations composed of diverse materials that offer opportunities for self reflection, rich symbolism and community engagement, bridging the divide between public and private. Rolón explores how cultivated settings and social barriers operate and its relationship to postcolonial spaces. The work is at once melancholic, excessive and exuberant, poised somewhere between celebration and regret. Inviting the viewer to engage in discourse and discussion.

Rolón 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; Museo de Arte de Ponce, San Juan, Puerto Rico; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA and Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (CAM). His work has also been exhibited 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; Oakland University Art Gallery, Michigan and Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico.

Current exhibitions include A Very Anxious Feeling: Voices of Unrest in the American Experience (20 Years of the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection), Taubman Museum of Art, Virginia, Open Storage: Selections from the collection & Works on Loan, curated by Silvia Karman Cubiñá and Leilani Lynch, Bass Museum of Art, Miami and and Sculpture Milwaukee. The artist is represented by Kotaro Nukaga, Tokyo; Pearl Lam Galleries; Hong Kong/Shanghai and Salon 94, New York.

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