Mark Morrisroe: From This Moment On

2011, Catalogue, 28 pages, single-color,

With contributions from: Kathy Acker, Michael Bracewell, David Joselit, Mark Morrisroe, Peggy Phelan

Mark Morrisroe’s work was intrinsically tied to
his elaborate personae and his sexual and so-
cial relationships. He grew up in Boston where
he worked as teenager hustler and where he
later went to art school, before moving to
New York City in the mid 1980s. He died at
the age of thirty from AIDS related illnesses.
Morrisroe’s subjects were his friends, lovers,
and his everyday surroundings. The imagery
of his photographs and 8mm films combines
the diaristic with the melodramatic, present-
ing the post-punk scenes in Boston and New
York through a lens of vivid and romantic
degradation and decay. He worked with the
immediate medium of Polaroid, while also
experimenting with the photographic process,
creating layered and hand-painted prints,
photograms and cyanotypes. His resulting
works are searing and frank portrayals of
the display of selfhood, sexuality, illness
and death.
While his photographs and collaged prints
often appear offhand, and at times depict inti-
mate moments and desires, they also present
individuals, couples, and groups as aspira-
tional, posturing starlets, adopting the faded
hues of 1950s Hollywood publicity shots and
the classical nude compositions of Man Ray.
Drawing equally from popular culture, and
drag, cabaret, club and drug scenes, the per-
formativity of his subjects was paramount.