Ian Lewandowski: Mighty Real

Mighty Real spans four years of photographs and a short film about The Saint, an underground members-only gay discotheque that stood between 1980 and 1988 in New York City's East Village. Since 2020 Lewandowski has obsessively circled this place, interviewing and photographing surviving members, and extrapolating their recollections into staged constructed photographs. The Saint seems to have resisted its own documentation, perhaps rightfully so, and there is only scant physical evidence of its existence. The bulk of The Saint's membership perished due to AIDS-related complications. The exhibition includes a new short film, Phoenix Rising, about the famed planetarium projector that hovered above the perfectly circular dance floor of The Saint, below a giant perforated steel dome.