Pearl Lam Galleries is pleased to present the first ever solo exhibition in Singapore by Carlos Rolón/ Dzine who has produced a major and new installation Mi Casa (My House) that incorporates themes of domesticity, multiculturalism, pattern, and craft-making traditions. The exhibition will open at Pearl Lam Galleries on 20th January 2015, and coincides with the unveiling in Singapore of a bespoke neon sculptural work presented in collaboration by Carlos Rolón/Dzine, Pearl Lam Galleries and the Rolls-Royce Arts Initiative.

Rolón, who also goes by the name Dzine, has been recognized for his elaborately crafted paintings and ornate sculptures that come out of Kustom Kulture. His practice encompasses a range of media moving seamlessly between murals, sculpture, painting, and installation while he investigates pop culture, craft, ritual, beauty, spirituality, and identity and its relationship to art history, subculture, appropriation and the institution. His carefully crafted, hybrid works are playfully situated between the contradictory worlds of conspicuous consumption and urban artefact.

The exhibition Mi Casa at Pearl Lam Galleries, Singapore can be seen as a follow-up to Rolón’s highly successful installation My Mother’s Living Room at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, which was an exact reproduction of the artist’s childhood living room from 1976. Born to a Puerto Rican family and growing up as a child in Chicago, the artist bore witness to the ways in which first generation immigrants adapted to new American middle-class lifestyles. These families brought the diaspora into the homes by decorating walls and furniture with exotic colours, textures and patterns to create a sense of identity, comfort and ultimately, an aspirational lifestyle. It is from here that Rolón’s present characteristic incorporation of custom culture, faux luxury and excessiveness originate.

Mi Casa creates an all-encompassing installation that not only pays homage to this culture, but also produces a shrine-like presentation and embraces the universal themes of the home. Everyday items are treasured as artifacts, elevated to a higher status and their functionality becomes secondary. The incorporated original, coloured and decorated porcelain dinnerware, elaborate customized candelabras, ornate chandelier and sculptural decanters are at once melancholic, excessive and exuberant, yet poised somewhat between celebration and regret.

Carlos Rolón’s new site-specific commission presented by Pearl Lam Galleries and the Rolls- Royce Art Initiative, Untitled (Opulence), will be unveiled in the Rolls Royce showroom to coincide with the opening of Mi Casa. The neon sculpture inspired by the Rolls Royce radiator explores movement, lines and the interaction of colour together with changes of mood and perception. By juxtaposing the use of neon and a mandala-like pattern, the work employs the concept of Kustom Kulture, a way of adjusting objects, and combines a language of post minimalism, pop art and abstraction.

“Carlos is unique in his ability to dissolve barriers between artistic disciplines and the observations which come from his practice are a result game changing and inspiring. I am very excited about introducing this artist to the Singapore art scene”. Pearl Lam, founder and Director of Pearl Lam Galleries.