Whitney Biennial 2017

Floor 5

Born 1977 in Chicago, IL
Lives in Chicago, IL, and Los Angeles, CA

Both Harold Mendez’s two- and three-dimensional works feature rich textures and multilayered surfaces that the artist creates through labor-intensive processes. The layers of materials in Harold Mendez’s These deeds must not be thought after these ways; so, it will make us mad create a dark, netlike pattern that nearly obscures images of floating, ghostly pairs of eyes. The title—a line spoken by Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare’s guilt-stricken murderess—hints at a troubled conscience. To the artist, the eyes are unwelcome witnesses, like a “memory following you,” prodding viewers to think about personal wrongs committed, and to confront what they might be failing to acknowledge or else have willfully forgotten. 

In American Pictures, a tree trunk covered with the bloodred crushed bodies of cochineal insects is skewered on a wrought-iron bar. The carnation petals scattered across the gridded base are renewed regularly by Museum staff, suggesting a ritual action, as when one leaves flowers at a grave. If—as the title suggests—this is a picture of America, then it is one haunted by the specter of brutality and death.