on the wall: Carlos Rolón/Dzine
June 11 – August 27, 2016
Reception: Saturday, June 11, 4-7pm

Melding painting, sculpture, and found objects, Carlos Rolón/Dzine’s art practice explores the ways in which culture, both popular and historic, influences the public and private spaces that we inhabit. As a first-generation immigrant of Puerto Rican decent, Rolón creates work that questions the concepts of luxury and craft-making to explore issues of identity, integration and aspiration. In a new site-specific installation, produced for the gallery’s on the wall project space for the summer of 2016, Rolón re-creates the communal atmosphere of an urban barbershop. Through appropriated signage, commercial lighting, and the artist’s own mirror paintings, the gallery’s street-facing façade evokes the variety of customers that enter a barbershop, seeking kinship while also carving out their own personas.

Rolón will also exhibit his three-channel video, Bladez of Glory, in the gallery’s porcelain projects viewing space. Named after the local barbershop where it was filmed, this short documentary tells the multifaceted accounts of stylists and patrons alike, scrutinizing their commitment to both distinction and community. The film was commissioned by Oakland University and directed by renowned filmmaker Joey Garfield. Additionally, a vintage barber chair in the gallery’s backroom will facilitate custom fades from local hair artists, in a series of interactive performances throughout the duration of the exhibition – dates TBD. Through his installation, video and peformances, Rolón’s intention is to “introduce the Barber as artist/sculptor and how the barbershop creates a home and safe-haven to allow for freedom of expression.”

Carlos Rolón/Dzine (b. 1970, Chicago, IL, lives and works in Chicago) attended Columbia College Chicago with a concentration in painting and drawing and has received awards from The National Endowment for the Arts and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Rolón first exhibited at moniquemeloche with solo shows in 2002 and 2004. Internationally recognized, he has had solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2002); Palais de Tokyo Paris (2004); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2005); Museo del Arte de Puerto Rico (2006); The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art Gateshead UK (2006); Museum Het Domein Sittard NL (2007); Contemporary Arts Society Rome (2007); Illinois State University Normal IL (2008); Bass Museum of Art Miami (2009); The New Museum New York (2011); The Dallas Contemporary (2013); Rockford Art Museum (2015); and most recently at Oakland University Art Gallery, Rochester, MI (2016) who published a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Dick Goody and Theaster Gates.

In 2007 Rolón represented the Ukraine in the 52nd Venice Biennale, in 2010 he was included in the Busan Biennale in South Korea, and in 2015 in the first Chicago Architectural Biennial at The Arts Incubator, University of Chicago. His work is included in public collections including: Bass Museum of Art, Miami; Brooklyn Museum, NY; City of Chicago Public Art Collection; Deagu Art Museum, South Korea; Museo del Barrio, NY; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico; Museum Het Domein, Sittard, NL; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; and Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev, Ukraine, among others.

He currently has solo shows at Chicago Cultural Center I Tell You This Sincerely (thru July 30, 2016) and at Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit Vintage Voyages and Atomic Memories (thru August 28, 2016). Upcoming is his solo show Tropicaliza at Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico (2016).

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Tags: Bucktown, Carlos Rolon, Dzine, Monique Meloche Gallery, moniquemeloche, opening, West Town, Wicker Park