Bella Union's First Artist in Residence: Harold Mendez
About Harold Mendez
Harold Mendez, a first-generation American of Mexican-Colombian descent renowned for his work in installation, photography, and sculpture, is the first artist in residence at Bella Union Winery. Mendez’s practice is rooted in history and transformation, and his work explores themes of memory, materiality, and the reconstruction of place and identity. A recipient of the 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship Award, his work has graced exhibitions at the Wexner Center, MoMA, the Whitney Biennial, and other prestigious venues. In fall 2024, Harold immersed himself in every facet of the Bella Union estate collaborating with winemaker Brooke Bobyak Price and her team to craft a visual identity for the winery.
Harold Mendez captures the essence of time as an unfolding, layered process that merges instinct with mastery, much like the art of winemaking.
Spanning ten feet across marbled cork, the artwork echoes the vineyard’s textured terrain, with silver leaf inlays that reflect shifting light and the rhythm of seasons.
A Moment’s Notice, 2025
Cork, silver leaf, cabernet lees, graphite, copper, mounted on Dibond.
Dimensions 27” H x 120”
In A Moment’s Notice, Harold Mendez captures the essence of time as an unfolding, layered process that merges instinct with mastery, much like the art of winemaking. Stretching ten feet across marbled cork, the composition evokes a vineyard’s textured and mountainous terrain through its organic grain, silver leaf glimmers, and the ephemeral stains of wine lees. Reclaimed copper, already oxidized by time, recalls the vineyard’s history while forming an abstract horizon that shifts with the passing light. The work transcends traditional painting to embody a living landscape—a poetic tribute to the cycles of land, labor, and enduring beauty.
An Expression of Place
Let the shadows in to play their part, one of Mendez's personally selected works for the exhibition at the winery, was created amidst the nearby Marin Headlands in California and is comprised of treated eucalyptus bark. The unique piece seamlessly integrates the outdoors with indoor spaces, providing a contrast between deep black graphite and gentle, filtered light peeking through for a captivating translucence.
Other Selected Works
At night we walk in circles (2016)
The spiderwebs in Archive (Antioquia) serve as a metaphor for Mendez’s complex relationship with Latin America and the migration journeys of his parents from Colombia and Mexico. As a first-generation American, Mendez’s work reflects on the intertwined narratives of migration, memory, and identity. The use of the spider web motif emphasizes the intricate and often fragile connections between past and present, drawing on the rich visual and symbolic traditions of Latin American art and culture.
"Comma" Porcelain Disc (2024)
Mendez classifies some of his works as commas, a punctuation mark that serves as a connection of seemingly disparate artworks to prompt a moment of pause or a connection to something greater.
Peace Before This (2017-2021)
This piece was created by Harold Mendez following a 2017 MacArthur Foundation-sponsored trip to Cuba, where he documented ceremonial sites and monuments rich in historical significance. In his Los Angeles studio, Mendez printed these images and layered them with graphite and charcoal, creating a symbolic veil that both obscures and reveals the underlying imagery.
Untitled Judge 1,2,3 (2016-2024)
Mendez’s two-dimensional works transform found photographs through a laborious manual process similar to lithography and painting. Using darkroom techniques to develop photographs combined with silkscreening to build the image, Mendez both traces and erases archival imagery with specific sociocultural or art historical references to create otherworldly new images.
Bella Union 2024-2025 Artist in Residence Harold Mendez, Bella Union architect Mike Niemann, and Bella Union Director of Winemaking Michael Accurso
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