Carlos Rolón: 50 GRAND
2017-05-05 18:00 - 2017-07-22 15:00 (America/Indiana/Indianapolis) | Tube Factory artspace, 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Photo: My Father’s Wishes No. 1, 2014, Wallpaper, wood, mirror, 24kt gold leaf, gold plated chains, quartz crystals, metal, sunglasses and bronzed boxing gloves
Before language to Hemingway, from the ancient Sumerians to the Greeks to the modern day, there was the sport of boxing. With his exhibit 50 Grand, Chicago-based artist Carlos Rolón/Dzine will present a dually charged exploration of boxing and domestic culture, inspired by the tactility and performative qualities of boxing, and its relationship to contemporary art at Tube Factory artspace, 1125 Cruft St. Though the third iteration of the exhibit, it will features a newly commissioned performative installation of live sanctioned Golden Gloves fights, organized by Indy Boxing and Grappling and sponsored by Top Rank Productions. The exhibit is a nod to Ernest Hemmingway’s 50 Grand, and like the story explores the relationship between courage and professionalism.
With this exhibit, Rolón continues to mine his childhood memories. He invites the viewer to step into intimate scenes such as his family’s wood-paneled basement, decorated with gold garlands and vintage beer placards, where his father would watch prize fights like Roberto Durán V. Sugar Ray Leonard, also known as the No Más Fight. This fight was particularly important for Rolon growing up as it allowed him to sit for short periods of time connecting with his father.
Rolón monumentalizes his blue-collar trophy den as the setting for his exhibition, creating an homage not only to boxing culture, but also to Puerto Rican immigration to America.
Within the exhibition is a newly commissioned performative installation of live Golden Glove fights organized by Indy Boxing and Grappling scheduled June 2 and July 7, 7-9 p.m. Fighters will wear robes designed by Rolón on each of the three scheduled fights then on display when the ring is inactive.
Within the main gallery is an installation of paintings and sculptural fabric works exuberant with color, texture, patterns, and experiments in surface that create a visual dialogue between the physical charge of boxing, the garments worn by the fighters, and the artist’s own childhood home and upbringing as a first generation immigrant. Occupying the den is a series of custom-made trophies entitled Immigrants/Emigrants (Symbols and Mementos for the Nuyoricans) created, as the artist states “for people like my father and mother who came to the U.S for a better life with dreams and aspirations that never quite materialized, but still achieved success in other aspects of their life.”
The exhibit runs through July 22 open Monday-Friday 9 am-6 pm, Saturdays 11-3 with extended evening hours every first Friday.
Made possible by the Herbert Simon Family Fund, Top Rank Productions, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Sun King Brewery
About Carlos Rolón/Dzine (b. 1970, Chicago, IL)
Rolón attended Columbia College Chicago with a concentration in painting and drawing. Rolón has been recognized for his elaborately crafted paintings, ornate sculptures and works that come out of American, Latino and uniquely based subcultures. His studio practice investigates pop culture, craft, ritual, beauty and its relationship to art history, subculture, appropriation and the institution. As a first-generation immigrant of Puerto Rican decent, the artist creates objects questioning the concept of luxury and craft making to explore questions of identity, integration and aspiration. His work also represents a detailed examination of curiosity and the process of art making and the cultures surrounding this. The work often addresses his biography by melding memory and the imaginary with carefully crafted, hybrid works that are playfully situated between the contradictory worlds of conspicuous consumption and urban artifact. The work is at once melancholic, excessive and exuberant, poised somewhere between celebration and regret. Rolón illuminates how the masculine can become delicate and the how the baroque can be minimal. The artist often channels this approach with site-specific installation work, vivid large-scale paintings and ornate sculptures in various materials expanding on ideas of self-reflection and imagined luxury. The works ultimately produce a hybrid language of social practice, painting and sculpture 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; and CAM Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis. His work has also been exhibited in group shows 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.
In 2007 Rolón represented Ukraine in the 52nd Venice Biennale. He is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation award for Painting and Sculpture. Rolón’s work is included in the following public collections: Bass Museum of Art, Miami; Brooklyn Museum, New York; City of Chicago Public Art Collection; Deagu Art Museum, Deagu; Museo del Barrio, New York; Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan; Museum Het Domein, Sittard, The Netherlands; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; and Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev, Ukraine, among others.
About Tube Factory artspace: Tube Factory is a 12,000 square foot museum space curated based upon the themes of community, place, memory and mythology. We commission local, regional, national and international contemporary visual and musical artists, borrow artifact-based exhibits and create community-sourced exhibits.
A previously vacant former manufacturing building, it is open Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Saturday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Shauta Marsh is chief curator at Tube Factory artspace, curating and/or organized over 40 exhibitions including Inheritance: LaToya Ruby Frazier and Tony Buba, Mound At Large: Trenton Doyle Hancock, Fermata: Richard Mosse, RCA: Scott Hocking, Richard Mosse: Fermata, Toyin Odutola, Mari Evans:Carl Pope, etc. Prior to working as a curator, she wrote for various national and local publications.

July Art Workshops for ages 6 +
2017-07-05 16:00 - 17:30 | Tube Factory artspace, 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Themed art classes for children 6 + every Wednesday of July. Classes will be mostly in English but Spanish can be used for children who are bilingual/Spanish speaking. Every week will be a new, dynamic and sensory adventure with a small lesson at the beginning. We will learn about patterns, shapes, rhythm, texture, image, line and color through a variety of media and engaging projects. Inspiration for art projects is drawn from the 50 Grand exhibition currently in the gallery at Tube Factory.
Your child can join any time. New registrations will take place before class each week, so plan to come a little early if it is your child’s first time in the class. Children will be broken into age groups and given an activity for their skill level. There is no fee for classes.
RSVP at: email hidden; JavaScript is required
Wednesdays 4-5:30pm
(July 5, July 12, July 19, July 26)
Clases del arte para niños de edades 6+
A Tube Factory artspace: 1125 Cruft St Indianapolis, IN 46203
GRATIS
Clases del arte de diferentes temas cada miércoles en Julio. Clases estará por la mayoría en inglés pero español puede ser usado si hay niños bilingües o hispanohablantes. Cada semana es una nueva aventura dinámica y sensorial con una lección pequeño al principio. La inscripción va a continuar durante el curso de clases, entonces su niño puede juntar en cualquier momento. Inscripciones nuevos tomará lugar antes de la clase cada semana, entonces planea venir un poco temprano si es la primer clase para su niño. Los niños van a estar separados en grupos por sus edades y los acividades van a estar apropiados para sus niveles de habilidad. Clases son totalmente gratuitas.
Dos opciones para la clase:
Los miércoles 4-5:30pm
( Julio 5, Julio 12, Julio 19, Julio 26)

Adrian Matejka-Presented by UIndy's Social Practice Art MA program and Etchings Press
2017-07-07 20:00 - 21:00
With the lean, long jab and agile step of a boxer, Adrian Matejka delivers this knockout dramatization of the larger-than-life life of heavyweight champion Jack Johnson. In dexterous interpolating voices, and in forms ranging from enveloping sonnets to prose letters and interviews, Johnson emerges as a scrappy, hard-edged hero—troubled by his own demons but determined to win the “fight of the century,” a fight that underscored the bitter realities of racism in America. These poems don’t pull no punches.
Presented by UIndy’s Social Practice Art MA program and Etchings Press, a student-run publisher.
ABOUT THE BOOK
The legendary Jack Johnson (1878–1946) was a true American creation. The child of emancipated slaves, he overcame the violent segregationism of Jim Crow, challenging white boxers—and white America—to become the first African-American heavyweight world champion. The Big Smoke, Adrian Matejka’s third work of poetry, follows the fighter’s journey from poverty to the most coveted title in sports through the multi-layered voices of Johnson and the white women he brazenly loved. Matejka’s book is part historic reclamation and part interrogation of Johnson’s complicated legacy, one that often misremembers the magnetic man behind the myth.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adrian Matejka is the author of The Devil’s Garden (Alice James Books, 2003) and Mixology (Penguin, 2009). He is the recipient of two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, a National Poetry Series Award, the New York/New England Award, and a fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. He teaches at Indiana University and lives in Bloomington with his wife, Stacey Lynn Brown, and their daughter.

Portrait Making Meet-up
2017-07-08 11:00 - 15:00 | Tube Factory artspace, 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Bring your own art supplies and get paired up with someone to do portrait studies in our open, concrete-floor community space. Describe your partner in your own medium (can be paint or charcoal, of course, but also can be writing, clay, or any type of abstraction! Realism is not necessary). We will have basic art supplies like paper, markers, crayons, and such.
All creatives, professional or amateur, are welcome. Even if you just want to come to be a model and hang out, you are welcome!

Art Workshops for ages 6+
2017-07-12 16:00 - 17:30 | Tube Factory artspace, 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States

Art Workshop for ages 6+
2017-07-19 16:00 - 17:30 | Tube Factory artspace, 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States

Brick Street South Poetry Series: Abegunde
2017-07-20 18:30 - 21:00 | Tube Factory artspace, 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Abegunde is a Memory Keeper, ancestral priest in the Yoruba Orisa tradition, and a Reiki Master with a focus on the recovery and healing of ancestral memory from the Earth and human body. She chooses to forget that words and days have limits. Instead, she chooses to remember – and live by – the words of a young Black woman in the 5th grade: Poetry can change the world. As a result, she spends her days and dreamtime chanting silenced memories into spoken histories. On the weekdays, when she isn’t birthing new words out of sound and images, she shapeshifts into a professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies and the founding director of The Graduate Mentoring Center at Indiana University. Her ongoing research and subsequent creations help us understand how unresolved ancestral emotions shape the lives of descendants of the Middle Passage and the links between ancestral wounding, contemporary violence, and illness and disease. She will read from ​her work-in-progress Learning to Eat the Dead: Juba, USA, ​a meditation on visiting Juba, South Sudan, living in the United States, and poetic transparency.
Brick Street South Poetry Series features a poet and an open mic the third Thursday of every month. Free admission and parking. Beer and wine for purchase.

Pop Up Opera
2017-07-21 19:30 - 23:00 | Tube Factory artspace, 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Join Whitney Cleveland, Benjamin Holbrook, Toiya Lister, Andrea Tulipana, Julia Gries, Jeremiah Marcéle Sanders, Meghan Bartcsch and the Chamber Ensemble for a night of opera and fun!

What's On Your Mind?
2017-07-22 11:00 - 15:00 | Tube Factory artspace, 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Have something you want to say? Sound artist Oreo Jones will listen and record your stories and thoughts every third Saturday of the month. If selected, your recording will go on our radio station, 99.1, WQRT. To ensure you have a time slot with Jones, please e-mail: email hidden; JavaScript is required

Art Workshop for Ages 6 +
2017-07-26 16:00 - 17:30 | Tube Factory artspace, 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
