99 Objects: Rafael Sánchez on Untitled by Mark Morrisroe

Visual AIDS Artist Member Rafael Sánchez and Mark Morrisroe (1959–1989) met as neighbors moving into the same building in Jersey City in 1985 when Morrisroe arrived in the NY area from Boston. They helped each other as young artists and confidants. Sánchez became a caregiver to Morrisroe in his last years; the complex nature of that experience is poetically chronicled in Sánchez's essay Panorama With Hood Ornament in the influential Boston School exhibition catalogue (ICA, Boston, 1995). For the Whitney Museum's 99 Objects series, Sánchez discussed his personal recollections of Morrisroe, Morrisroe's artistic process, and the Whitney's Morrisroe work "Untitled," 1985.

Audio Courtesy of Whitney Museum of American Art.

whitney.org/Events/99ObjectsUntitledMorrisroe

As well as a number articles on Morrisroe, Sánchez is coeditor and founder of alLuPiNiT (the new york city environmental magazine) with his partner, artist Kathleen White. Through alLuPiNiT and in conversation with the Estate of Mark Morrisroe (Collection Ringier), Sánchez/White published the official reprints of Morrisroe's DIRT when it was discovered that Mr. Sánchez' archives contained the only known complete set of the notorious punk zine.

Named in honor of the Whitney’s new address, 99 Gansevoort Street, 99 Objects is a series of in-gallery programs focusing on individual works of art from the Museum’s collection on view in America Is Hard to See. Speakers include artists, writers, Whitney curators and educators, and an interdisciplinary group of scholars.

Rafael Sánchez is an artist working in New York City. Though his primary medium is drawing, he has produced a number of projects locally and abroad that explore the confluence between theater and visual art. Sánchez was a founding member of Aljira, A Center for Conteporay Art in Newark, NJ. An exhibition that explores the artist’s exhibition there, Look Don’t Touch (the center’s first one person show in 1985) is being organized for 2016. A project examining Sánchez/ White collaborative work is being planned for 2017 in NYC.