Carlos Rolón | Gild the Lily (Caribbean Hybrid I, II, III) | 2019

Carlos Rolón is known for his socially-active practice that engages audiences in bright, expressive, multi-layered installations, paintings, and sculpture that use gold leaf, mirrored glass, tile, and iron. In addition to more traditional art forms however, he has also created playful nail designs in boutiques staged in galleries and at art fairs; decorated cars like the Latino Kustom Kulture tradition of the American south west; and most recently, decorated a basketball pink with bright green palm fronds as a fund raiser for re-building basketball courts in Puerto Rico. Rolón’s expressive works reach into pop culture and daily life and challenge the spare tradition of post-war Minimalism and Conceptual art.

Rolón is explicit about his own cultural in-betweenness. He is first generation Puerto Rican-American, and uses natural forms and social traditions as a way to explore overlapping political and cultural histories. He references the vernacular architecture and design of Puerto Rico, pointing to the island’s history of immigration, colonization, sugarcane production, industrialization, and tourism. In recent projects in Puerto Rico and New Orleans, Rolón used the decorative iron fences brought to Puerto Rico and the American south by African slaves, and the tiles, macramé, and mirrors of tourist hotels and impoverished Caribbean homes to explore common human desire for beautiful space. Just as all landscapes hold their histories within them, Rolón embeds history through his use of luxe and common materials.

For Sculpture Milwaukee, Rolón has sheathed the outside of the lobby cube of the Chase Bank building with a translucent diorama of tropical flowers, making the “bird cage” lobby the largest sculpture in the region.

The choice of the Chase Bank lobby is specific. The modernist cube is emblematic of the urban renewal and revitalization schemes that took place across the country in the post-war period. The International style of architecture, redolent of the idealism of the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, reminds us how post-war America salvaged the style as a marker of our own global power. As a resident of Chicago, Rolón grew up with the dreams and problems of urban life. 

By turning the transparent lobby into a glowing jewel box Rolón’s installation will be like a flame that attracts us to a key city intersection, where east meets west, north meets south, and where water meets street. Rolón’s unexpected cube will connect to the summer sky, the blue water of the Milwaukee river and concrete that flows beneath and through the lobby space. Rolón’s luminous beacon signals the reinvigorated vibrancy of our downtown.