Encore Exhibition
Mark S. Kornbluth
Encore
Cavalier Gallery presents Encore
An exhibition of Broadway-inspired photographs by Mark S. Kornbluth
In collaboration with our partners at Cavalier Galleries, we are pleased to announce ENCORE: Mark S. Kornbluth’s Broadway Photographs.
Five years after the start of Broadway’s Great Intermission—the 18-month period when the Covid pandemic forced theaters to close—Mark S. Kornbluth has released new images in his historic portrait series DARK.
DARK comprises large-format photographs of Broadway theaters that quickly became symbols of the resilience of New York City, and a poetic tribute to the power of the arts for healing and human connection. While the buildings themselves awaited the return of actors and audiences, Kornbluth saw the opportunity to shift the spotlight to these sentinels of Times Square, many of them architectural marvels who play understudy to the incredible talents they house. Trained as a professional actor, with close friends affected by the unprecedented interruption of live performances, Kornbluth began the series as his artistic homage to the age-old mantra “the show must go on.”
ENCORE is a reprise of Kornbluth’s 2023 solo exhibition at Cavalier Galleries that features beloved photographs from the original collection and several new releases on view for the first time. Collector favorites like Richard Rodgers, in which the Hamilton marquee poignantly declares “History is Happening in Manhattan,” are on view alongside The Phantom of the Opera at the Majestic Theatre, nearing the end of its record-setting run. Kornbluth took his nightly photographs, with streetlights serving as stagecraft and theater signage as dialogue. There are no passersby in the images, but each artwork nevertheless comes alive with its own sort of humanity. Kornbluth succeeds in capturing the presence of absence, and in doing so, reflects a shared and profound experience.
The theaters depicted in ENCORE include the Ambassador, Barrymore, Belasco, Booth, Kerr, Lyceum, Lunt-Fontanne, Music Box, New Amsterdam, Radio City Music Hall, Shubert, and more. Broadway productions include legendary shows such as Chicago, Moulin Rouge, The Music Man, and West Side Story. The large-format photographs, printed as dye sublimation on aluminum, are immersive and luminous testaments to the grandeur and indomitable spirit of New York. This is an encore performance not to be missed.
“My life is deeply tied to New York City, Times Square and Broadway. It started here, and I always return to this place; I did theatre professionally, and many of my close friends still do.
I approached this series with the intention to dramatize the language and narrative in the signage, contrasted with the stillness of the mise-en-scene. Despite the sudden and lasting emptiness that the pandemic gave rise to, I discovered a delightful tension, a sense of Broadway waiting for the promise and renewal that art invariably brings. Returning night after night to the abandoned Theater District, I walked the streets, making my way past shuttered restaurants. I was enveloped by the hush that fell over the city, broken by the occasional siren. I was able to capture the individual images that became “Silent Broadway: a series of theatres, dark, during the pandemic.” I chose to work in medium format, which allowed me to document the unpopulated landscape in stark contrast to the nuanced details of the theaters.
Studying acting at the graduate level gave me a greater sense of proportion, relationships, and theatricality. I’m deeply curious about relationships between objects, how emotions are rooted in time and place, and how to create the power of a shared experience. This project is a culmination of everything I’ve done with my life, a return home.
I invite my audience to view these images as I have come to see them, as windows through which memory and time work in both directions —we need only look a little closer to know we will someday return, together.”
