Artist Harold Mendez avidly listens to music while making his work; and it is not unusual for musician Jeff Parker to be inspired by art to make music. For a special recorded solo performance, Parker explores improvisations in Mendez’s survey exhibition Let us gather in a flourishing way.

Mendez and Parker will introduce the new video followed by an online exchange about their shared ideas, the symbiosis of art and music, and how they’ve been making work today.


Jeff Parker (b. 1967, Connecticut) is recognized as one of contemporary music’s most versatile and innovative electric guitarists and composers - creating works that exploit the contrary relationships between tradition and technology, improvisation and composition, and the familiar and the abstract. A longtime member of the influential indie band Tortoise, Parker has been an associate member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1995. A prolific bandleader and collaborator, Jeff has appeared on over 140 commercial recordings. Currently, Parker has been focusing on music production, small ensembles and solo performance.

Harold Mendez  (b. 1977, Chicago) has taken part in numerous exhibitions such as  Being: New Photography  (2018) at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Whitney Biennial (2017), New York. Mendez was recently the subject of a solo presentation, The years now at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago. In addition, his work has been shown at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Bass Museum, Miami; LAXART, Los Angeles; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; MoMA PS1, New York; Renaissance Society, Chicago; Project Row Houses, Houston; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among others. Mendez has been awarded residencies at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; Light Work, Syracuse; the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation; the Core Program, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; and the Headlands Center for the Arts. His works are included in the permanent collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Minneapolis Institute of Art; the DePaul Art Museum, Chicago; and the Colección Diéresis, Guadalajara, Mexico. Mendez studied at Columbia College Chicago; the 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.

Video production by Stephen Schauer