Dzine (b. Carlos Rolon, 1970)
Lives and works in Chicago

Through an ongoing response to popular culture, post-conceptual methods, baroque elements, romanticism, craft-making and appropriation, Chicago-based artist Dzine has developed his own language that is finding its place in our contemporary art discourse. Dzine has created work that contextualizes these diverse elements into a vernacular of contemporary aesthetics.

Often dissected and consistently engaging, his work addresses culture through a lens of spirituality, beauty, desire, faith, folklore, and identity. A mixture of sculpture, paintings, and installation, the works reside in an imaginative, kaleidoscopic, and meticulous world. The juxtaposition and combination of the studio paintings, the appropriated and original kustom kulture sculptures result in hybrid artifacts that are beautifully crafted, aggressive, thoughtful, sexual, and strangely seamless. Raw, fluid and sexually physical, the large-scale paintings consume our attention drawing us closer to their iconography. There is no casual gaze at these art works, as the visual excess repels and then pulls the viewer closer into the work. The artist seeks to change the rules concerning the final image by illuminating how the masculine can become delicate, how baroque can be minimal, and how rational can become emotional. The work is at once melancholic, excessive and exuberant poised somewhere between celebration and regret. The result proves to be universal and painstakingly honest.

As noted by the Art Critic Stephanie Gonzlanez – Turner in her review of Dzine’s first solo exhibition at New York's Deitch Projects in Art in America magazine, “Dzine brings an outsiders veneration to the pastime —here the sincerity of the craft resounds more than its gaudiness”.

Dzine is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation award for Painting and Sculpture. His work has been included in exhibitions and in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York - Collection Vanmoerkerke, Oostende, Belgium - Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev - Museo del Barrio, NY and Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan. He has participated in residencies at The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom and Instituto Buena Bista, Curacao Centre For Contemporary Art. In 2007 Deitch Projects, NY presented Barrio Dreams, introducing the new sculptural work influenced by the Kustom Kulture at Art Basel Miami Beach. This followed the success of his presentation at Poem of an Inland Sea, Ukrainian Pavilion, 52nd Biennale di Venezia.

Dzine has exhibited extensively, both in the US and internationally. Solo museum exhibitions and projects include Flint Institute of Arts,Michigan, Bass Museum of Art, Miami, Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Punk-Funk, Contemporary Art Museum, St.Louis, Museum Het Domein, Sittard, The Netherlands. His work has also recently been included in “Living in Evolution,” the Busan Biennale, and Viva La Revolucion: A Dialogue with the Urban Landscape, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

In recognition of his recent studio practice, Dzine has been selected as the Kraus Visiting Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University, spring 2011.