The days of yesterday are all numbered in sum

Harold Mendez uses diverse materials – archival photographs, found objects, and organic matter, such as flower petals and pigments – to communicate complex and politicized concepts around history, memory, the body, and geography. A first-generation American of Mexican and Colombian descent, Mendez roots his practice in research-based travel to sites across Latin America. Often visiting governmental and public archives, the artist sources images and collects found objects that encapsulate the life and significance of a place.

Meticulous in nature, Mendez’s excavation-like process involves the altering, layering, and distressing of objects and images. His sculptural compositions are the result of a metamorphosis of sorts; the individual components maintain their unique histories even as they are amalgamated into something new. These works often allude to the body: a distorted face, a totem of composite objects, or bodily forms coated in cochineal, a blood red pigment derived from insects native to South America and Mexico. Scattered flowers often accompany his installations, as in American Pictures (2016). Fresh carnations petals are scattered at its base in an ongoing act of meditation, renewal, and commemoration.

Utilizing archival images that depict ambiguous yet charged people and places, Mendez transfers the image onto an aluminum plate after they have gone through a laborious transformation process. The image is slowly revealed through a range of methods, which distresses the final surface. It is a process of un-burial, an act that acknowledges the importance of the past as it reconstructs and monumentalizes what and whom the images represent. Mendez’s works encourage close consideration and prompt the viewer to ask what is depicted, who is bearing witness to whom, and how this past impacts the present. They remind us that this very moment is the direct result of the past, while the future remains dependent on our current choices. 

Harold Mendez (b. 1977) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, and his native Chicago, IL. Mendez received an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2007, a BA from Columbia College Chicago in 2000, and attended the Kwame Nkrumah  University of Science and Technology, School of Art and Design, in Ghana, West Africa, in 1999. He has had solo exhibitions at such venues as PATRON, Chicago; Van Every/Smith Galleries, Davidson College, Davidson, NC; Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, TX (forthcoming) ; and Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago. His work has also been included in many group exhibitions, including “Cross Currents/Intercambio Cultural,” Smart Museum of Art, Chicago; “Being: New Photography,” 2018, Museum of Modern Art, New York; “Whitney Biennial,” 2017, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and  among others. Mendez has been honored with numerous awards, grants, and residencies, including those from 3Arts Residency Fellowship in partnership with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency in   Captiva, FL;  Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME; CORE Program, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, New York, NY; and Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship . Mendez’s works can be found in the permanent public collections of the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, New York; Museum of Fine Arts Houston; Studio Museum in Harlem; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Chicago Transit Authority.

View the exhibition catalog below.