Thirty-three years ago today, on July 26, 1989, Louis Fulgoni died of complications from AIDS at the age of 53 – far too soon.

Moving on is the easy part. Remembering can be hard, but it’s essential. That’s what the retrospective exhibition of Louis’s work is for.

Louis’s doctor advised admitting him again. After a brief stay in NYU Medical Center’s Cooperative Care unit, he was transferred to the adjoining Tisch Hospital, where a bed had opened up on “the AIDS floor.”

It was as though, after the initial shock of his HIV diagnosis, Louis made a firm decision that illness would not define him. He seemed driven to create and got down to work almost obsessively.

It’s hard to fully understand Louis’s lifelong diffidence about exhibiting his work. He sold some pieces, usually to friends and acquaintances, but never had a solo show or expressed much interest in pursuing one.

Maybe the Staten Island connection was the reason Louis and I became friends so effortlessly. We even discovered that we had attended the same parochial school, albeit a generation apart.

The dreams began a few weeks after Louis Fulgoni died of complications from AIDS in July of 1989, following months of hospitalization and harrowing decline.