Harold Mendez: The years now

Logan Center Exhibitions is pleased to present The years now, an exhibition of sculpture, photography, and sound by the acclaimed multimedia artist and Chicago native Harold Mendez, which will be on view January 24–March 8, 2020.

The years now features newly commissioned works, grounded in Mendez’s fascination with material histories and the interplay of time and history with our conceptions of self. Working in multiple forms, Mendez uses mourning rituals and memorial objects as points of departure, evoking their function as both signifiers for and extensions of the human body. At the Logan Center, his haunting, formally inventive sculptural and photographic work will be augmented by an immersive sound installation.

Mendez populates the main gallery with a sprawling set of his signature industrial fiberglass grates, covered in paint and scattered with white carnation petals, slowly wilting and continually being replaced. A treelike sculpture emerges from this field of grates, another evocation of persistence and decay, accompanied by a 3D-printed replica of ancient pottery, placed in the main gallery. Mendez was drawn to the vessels, which originated in the area that is now Peru, through a research process with the Field Museum of Natural History’s South American ceramics collection. Utilitarian objects that sometimes also held a commemorative and sacred function, the reconstruction speaks to the artist’s fascination with Central and South American funerary rites as they are staged and valorized in the present.

The gallery is engulfed in a multi-channel sound installation that Mendez has developed in collaboration with Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio. At times emerging from the 3-D printed object, the voice of a narrator experiencing an existential crisis is cut up and transformed, drawing visitors around the gallery and then fading into the background.

Mendez outfits the smaller of the two gallery spaces with a pair of works that address the body both in a transformed state and through its absence: the sculpture but I sound better since you cut my throat (2016) and photograph Consent not to be a single being (2018).

The years now is a fascinating meditation on the ways in which the body is evoked through objects, sounds, and gestures. In Mendez’s work, materials that intersect with histories of violence and erasure on the one hand and renewal and remembrance on the other, are brought together in new constellations, creating a poetic assemblage that speaks to a conception of self that is deeply connected to divergent and intersecting histories.

Harold Mendez: The years now is presented by Logan Center Exhibitions and curated by Katja Rivera, Assistant Curator with Alyssa Brubaker, Exhibitions Manager. This exhibition is made possible by support from The David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Arts Foundation, The Reva and David Logan Foundation, and friends of the Logan Center.

For more information and details about related programming, visit arts.uchicago.edu/logan/gallery or follow Logan Center Exhibitions on Facebook and Instagram @logancenterexhibitions.

Related Programming

Opening Reception and Artist Tour
Friday, January 24, 6-8pm, Logan Center Gallery

Please join us for a reception to celebrate the opening of Harold Mendez: The years now. The artist will give a tour of the exhibition at 6:30pm.

Gallery Talk with Risa Puleo
Thursday, February 6, 6pm, Logan Center Gallery

Critic and curator Risa Puleo will lead a tour to discuss the themes of Harold Mendez: The years now.

In Response: Candice Hopkins
Wednesday, March 4, 6pm, Logan Center Terrace Seminar Room

Please join us for a public program with curator, writer, and researcher Candice Hopkins, who will discuss Harold Mendez’s project The years now at the Logan Center Gallery.

About the Artist
Harold Mendez has exhibited at numerous institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem; Bass Museum, Miami; LAXART in Los Angeles; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; and Project Row Houses, Houston, among others. His work has been reviewed in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Artforum, and frieze. In addition to his residencies at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation; Core Program, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture; Headlands Center for the Arts; and the Tamarind Institute, the artist is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant; Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship; Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship; and the 3Arts award. Mendez studied at Columbia College Chicago; University of Science and Technology, School of Art, Ghana, West Africa; and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is currently based in Los Angeles.

About Logan Center Exhibitions
Logan Center Exhibitions presents international contemporary art programming at the Logan Center Gallery and throughout the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago. Reflecting the spirit of inquiry at the university, Logan Center Exhibitions focuses on open, collaborative and process-based approaches to cultural production. Working closely with artists, students, scholars and community members, Logan Center Exhibitions presents innovative exhibitions by emerging and established artists; supports ambitious new commissions and research projects; disseminates knowledge through publications; and facilitates connections through talks and other public programs.