Early Works

Seek & Destroy

At a lecture we gave at the Museum School in Boston, people would ask us about the “Harvey Versus Harvey” event (a mispronunciation of our name). People inherently thought we must be in competition with one another, so we decided to also examine the idea of a clear winner in an “alter ego” version of […]

ConceptuaLibs

The process of creating work is, for Harvey, a complicated game of give-and-take. Each person brings a seed of an idea, a need that they must fulfill creatively, and a vision of what the final work should be. Long conversations over the phone, via email, and in the car (we consider the stretch of I-95 […]

W.O.F?

Harvey Loves Harvey is certainly not the first artistic approach to communication, and there is a very long history of the failures of language in academia, literature, theatre and cinema. One of our favorites is Abbott and Costello’s classic “Who’s On First?” comedy routine. For W.O.F.?, we decided to use this routine as the ideal […]

A Small Act Of Proof

During the finalization of the PROOF project, Harvey was invited to participate in a mail-art show in Texas. The theme of the show was ‘Rivers and Bridges’, and works could be loosely based on that subject. Using similar methods to PROOF, A SMALL ACT OF PROOF lasted for five mailings before it was forwarded to […]

Could Harvey Be Harvey?

Freud talked about the “uncanny”, where certain things would resonate primally as unexplainably disturbing: twins, feelings of deja vu. In ‘COULD HARVEY BE HARVEY’, we were trying to create a moment of uncanny for the viewer. At first glance everything appears normal but there is something not quite right. We repeated a conversation about literally […]

Tracking

The novels of Paul Auster, and his friendship with Sophie Calle, have been a steady source of inspiration to Harvey Loves Harvey. Auster writes frequently of characters that follows others for extended periods, hoping to understand them through their movements. In his novel Leviathan, his narrator follows the character Ben Sachs for days through the […]

Avatari

Created for an online exhibition in conjunction with a Chicago-based event titled [inter]PERSONAL, “AVATARi” was the first extended CONTROL project of the Harvey Loves Harvey :: Year One website. Inspired by Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, and particularly the idea of an ‘avatar’ that serves as one’s virtual representation in cyberspace, Harvey undertook the project of […]

Reproduction

In the spring of 2001, HLH’s Matthew Nash — in collaboration with artist Joel Alpern — created “Reproduction.” This piece was performed at 1926 Gallery in Chicago. For “Reproduction,” the artists secured a photocopier and put a sign on the sidewalk reading “free copies.” Anyone passing by could ask for free copies of any piece […]

The CONTROL Experiments

From 1999 to 2001, Harvey Loves Harvey was separated by more space than usual, as Nash lived in Chicago and Dean remained in New York. At the time, the Internet was coming to maturity, and there were many promises made about what the future would hold. In this exciting time, HLH started trying to test […]

Cow Friends Network

Jason Dean created a cow for NYC’s “Cows On Parade” public art event. For this project, fiberglass cows were given to artists to decorate or work with, and installed throughout the city. Dean’s cow, titled “The Cow Friends Network” presented a speaker with a button, and pressing the button called the cell phone of the […]

Bang Head Here

There is a simple phrase, with many variations, that we’ve all heard many times: “Like banging your head against a wall.” It is a raw and illustrative description of frustration, and of the sheer futility of so much of life. Harvey Loves Harvey created “Bang Head Here” out of that frustration. The piece is deceptively […]

Rear Defrost

In 1991, David Cronenberg’s film “Naked Lunch” hit the art theatres. While not the first time that nostalgia for the Beats popped up in the mainstream, the film had great impact on the boys of Harvey. As the Beats re-entered the mainstream over the next few years, their ideas and methods thoroughly saturated the project […]

Ego Rock and the Grunge Scene

TV Sucks Out Your Brain

In Rochester, NY, in the early ’90’s, the Pyramid Arts Center was the center of Harvey’s world. Filling the top floor of a mall converted from a brewery, Pyramid had space, art and attitude. For a small city like Rochester, it brought in interesting work by big-name contemporary artists, and maintained an open relationship with […]