Four Artists Whose Work You’ve Just Gotta See

Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art on the ground floor of an active textile manufacturer in Fall River, Massachusetts. A talented photographer who found his first success making photos as a teenager, Harvey managed to capture the art world's attention when he began creating his arresting, occasionally gothic and hexed-seeming objects. He's landed a spot in this fall's New Museum Triennial, as well as in an upcoming two-person exhibition at Brown University's David Winton Bell Gallery with the eco-feminist artist Faith Wilding, and he doesn't half-ass anything: Harvey IV's respect for Wilding is so acute, he has her name tattooed on his hand.

GQ STYLE: How did you make the transition from commercial photography to the art you're making now?
HARRY GOULD HARVEY IV: I started out as a bit of a troubled youth in the greater South Coast, Massachusetts, region. I was a high school dropout—I got expelled from nearly every school I went to. Ultimately I realized that educational institutions didn't really work well with whatever neurodivergent soup I was in, or even just my colorful lived experience. So I went touring in punk bands around the U.S., and that experience in documenting that kind of lifestyle became something I learned how to commodify at a young age. By the time I was 18 or 19, I was working for Time magazine and The Fader and all these different magazines. Those initial trips to New York City, where I would start to acquire contacts or figure out how to navigate the spectacle of media, were incredibly formative to my art practice as a whole.

Is that why wood and fabrication play into your work? Is it a reaction to the digital ether?
Initially I had to pare down my art practice out of economic struggle. I couldn't produce photographs anymore, I couldn't make larger sculptures. Back in 2015, I had a pretty severe mental episode where I lost language, and through drawing I rediscovered ways to communicate more effectively. Once I had the drawings, I realized it was important to protect and guard and revere these drawings with some type of object. I realized that traditional frames are kind of afterthoughts, or something that is meant to be quiet in relation to the objects that they're framing. I saw it as an opportunity to protect these spiritual ruminations with a crown of thorns.