KATES-FERRI PROJECTS is delighted to present Kevin Sabo’s MAISON SABO at FUTURE FAIR, located at Chelsea Industrial 535-549 West 28th Street NYC, Booth #F15 on view Wednesday, May 10, until Saturday, May 13, 2023. This is Sabo’s first presentation at a New York City art fair. He brings his signature ladies in their chic drag outfits, accessorized with their Yorkies, martini glasses, flowers, butterflies, and dragonflies. As a celebration of queer joy, Sabo’s work is not blind positivity. 

The queer community is keenly aware of the many anti-LGBTQ+ laws being introduced and passed into state and local governments that garner national attention, like in Tennessee, Texas, and Florida, aiming to ban queer expressions, like drag. In the 2023 legislative session alone, the ACLU tracked eleven bills that were passed into law in six states. In Virginia, where Sabo lives in Richmond, a city known for being the inviting safe haven for queer folk, the state’s new Republican governor is introducing guidelines to restrict the rights of trans students. As the former capital of the Confederacy, Richmond exists in contradictory states. 

Sabo creates his sassy, celebratory queens under these complex conditions. The artist acknowledges the queens’ fight for rights through years of tireless political action that engendered an expressive revolutionary culture ubiquitous in US mainstream media today with important shows like “RuPaul’s DragRace”. This type of visibility fuels the far-right’s anti-queer legislative agenda. Sabo pays homage to the iconic over-the-top aesthetic found in drag cultures that shows off their curves and looks in skimpy outfits and exaggerated makeup. His ladies assert their femininity and take up space to say, “we exist, we belong, and we deserve every right granted to others.” In their usual unyielding posture, the ladies glare and perhaps even glower silently at audiences with their side-eye. As if to also say, “Are you with us? Because, if not, you could get out of my face.” They don’t have time for anyone’s half-hearted support. Recognizing the heartbreak and the untenable tension of the present, Sabo also subtly incorporates penetrating details into his paintings, like the single tear from a set of all-seeing eyes in “Thoughts & Prayers Made Me Gay” (2023) to warn that the struggle is ongoing. 

Living his queer life out loud, Sabo is thankful for his predecessors for paving his way and finds incredible joy and connection through his work. The Future Fair is the perfect opportunity to assess his motifs and techniques. He calls the paintings in the show, “his greatest hits,” where he combines the significant components into these pieces. He starts his works with red backgrounds, which came from French Impressionism. His flat one-color backgrounds and his quick and gestural pencil marks that cut through his paint layers also recur. Most importantly, the idea that all his paintings are sketches. Freeing himself from the pressure of painting with a capital P, his latest sketches also usher in new inclusions, such as skin with more dimension. His ladies offer such cheeky and amusing attitudes because of the personal pride he feels within himself and in his community. 

Sabo refuses to let the toxic political rhetoric in Virginia to impact his love for Richmond. Invested in the safety of the next generation of LGBTQ+ youth–the future of queer resilience, Sabo hosts workshops to paint butterflies with queer youth in the area. The butterflies represent the beauty of transformation. Three such works made during a workshop are hung at the fair alongside Sabo’s work to fundraise for He She Ze and We, a local non-profit supporting the families of LGBTQ+ youth with education and advocacy. 

Created at a time of increased attacks from the far right on the trans community in many states of the US, Sabo’s work confronts the right with the inconvenient truth of queer vitality. By representing queer joy in lightheartedness and recognizing the attacks that his community faces in subtle nods, his paintings are steadfast assertions that LGBTQ+ lives thrive despite the growing challenges. They are seen and they are heard.

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