Texts for Nothing

Glorious prospect, but for the mist. Texts for Nothing is a fictional conversation in the form of a tragicomedy. Two characters, Braille Teeth (from a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat) and Nobody (from the film Dead Man by Jim Jarmusch), share a difficult journey across a landscape abstract and universal yet sharply particularized. With appropriations from Jean-Paul Sartre, TV on the Radio, Deadwood, Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, Shadi Abdel Salam, The Night of Counting the Years, Al-Mummia, Ralph Ellison, Stephen Wright, Cormac McCarthy, Kay Ryan, Jacques Lacan, Franz Kafka, Henry James, Albert Camus, Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber, Edward Albee, Kobo Abe, W.G. Sebald, Arundhati Roy, and other sources. About the author: Harold Mendez is an artist based in Chicago whose interdisciplinary practice concerns landscape, visibility, politics, and memory. He earned his MFA in 2007 from the University of Illinois, Chicago. Solo exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Contemporary Art Workshop, Mess Hall, Polvo, and Western Exhibitions, all in Chicago. Group exhibitions include The Drawing Center, New York; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; the London Biennale, UK; vuspace, Australia; the Hyde Park Art Center, and the Chicago Cultural Center. Harold has taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois Chicago; he has delivered lectures at The University of North Umbria (UK), Ox-Bow (Michigan), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), and the University of Houston (Texas). Texts for Nothing is published by Future Plan and Program, a provisional publishing project featuring newly-commissioned literary works by visual artists.