'Golden Empire (Empire State Building).' 1986. Chromogenic print, double exposed negative. Signed and editioned along bottom. Edition of 12. 17 x 16"; 18 1/2 x 17 1/2" (overall). Framed. Provenance: Pat Hearn Gallery (East Village) NYC and acquired in 1986 by Rhode Island private collection.

'Golden Empire' could be Morrisroe's intoxicated vision of the Empire State Building, just as much as it could be a strange dawn light filtering through the smog onto his fire escape. It could also be about the rich John, who had paid a hundred extra for going bareback, just as it could be true that Morrisroe was the illegitimate son of his mother's landlord, the Boston Strangler, or that could have been just a story Morrisroe made up. Everything could be anything for Mark Dirt, and to achieve that, he made art by all accounts at a frenetic pace. His judgments were like his scribbles, his mistakes were perfect, experimentation was an ideal in and of itself. In this way, his artistic practice helped define a new queer identity and aesthetic in the 1980s, the antithesis of idealized bodies and superlative achievement, a refusal to live according to what powerful forces demanded. Morrisroe synthesized the queer punk identity. Young men who were gritty, pierced, and were willing to try most anything, because the establishment was trying to kill them with silence and kill their art through demagoguery. And because, no matter what, those young queer men were never going to be what they were supposed to be. Similarly, Morrisroe refused to let the Empire State Building be what it was most understood to be. His was a life defined by nihilism and an in-your-face look that is perhaps taken for granted today. Nevertheless, it was an artistic practice that defined Boston and New York in the 1980s. Morrisroe's life was a queer punk artistic life. He lived and created without regard for the future, because for Morrisroe, as for many other young men in the 80s, time was running out.