Sabo returns to Denver — this time with Jeffrey Epstein hanging on the wall

Has Sabo gone mainstream?

Not exactly. But considering that the last time he came to Colorado it was to stand before a judge, an invitation to hang his work in downtown Denver counts as a career boost.

“It is nothing short of a miracle that a person like myself can show art in such a liberal city where so many people can see them.”

On Friday, July 3, the public art provocateur will unveil his completed “American Tarot” series at the VFW Gallery in downtown Denver as part of the city’s First Friday Art Walk.

In the cards

The series includes four tarot-card-style pieces depicting some of the darkest and most divisive episodes in modern American history:

• “The Towers” — September 11;
• “The Fool” — January 6;
• “Death” — COVID-19; and
• “The Hanged Man” — Jeffrey Epstein.

As Sabo tells Blaze Media, “Each card represents an event in our country’s past that greatly affected the American story, the country’s psyche, the soul of America.”

The newest addition, “The Hanged Man,” depicts the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein suspended from the tarot card’s traditional gallows.

For Sabo, the Epstein story is about far more than one depraved man.

“I believe the story of Jeffrey Epstein goes deep into how so many — from the entertainment industry to science, politics, finance, power — became influenced or compromised.”

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Hidden influence

In Sabo’s view, the affair helped fuel a growing distrust of elite institutions and raised uncomfortable questions about how influence is exercised among the world’s most powerful people.

Through the decades, Sabo says, he assumed celebrities and artists simply leaned left politically. Now he wonders whether some cultural figures may have been manipulated into advocating these views in ways the public still doesn’t fully understand.

“And then we saw how the music industry was influenced by the Diddy sex parties,” he said. “How many in the music industry were also swayed to speak in a way that helped support the leftist narrative?”

The questions only became more urgent during COVID, he argues, when public trust in institutions suffered another profound blow.

RELATED: Sabo’s story: Guerrilla street artist opens up in career-spanning ‘Unsavory Agents’

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Back for more

The former Marine has spent more than two decades producing some of America’s most powerful political street art, skewering everyone from Hollywood celebrities to corporate media and progressive politicians.

That makes the location of Friday’s exhibition all the more remarkable.

Sabo’s relationship with Colorado’s liberal-leaning authorities has been strained, to put it mildly. In October 2024, he appeared in a Denver courtroom after being charged for posting anti-illegal immigration artwork around Aurora, the Denver-adjacent city that had become a national symbol of the migrant crisis amid reports of violent Venezuelan gangs taking over apartment complexes.

The signs — which criticized unchecked illegal immigration and highlighted the plight of legal immigrants and struggling working-class communities — earned Sabo a fine and community service. Representing himself in court, the artist argued that his work was protected political speech and noted the irony that, while authorities struggled to contain far more serious crimes, they managed to find the time to prosecute a man for hanging posters.

Sabo admits he’s still getting used to the life of a respectable artist: “In street art I hit and run; no one to have a conversation with. In a gallery I feel out of my element.” But he’s grateful for the opportunity.

“It is nothing short of a miracle that a person like myself can show art in such a liberal city where so many people can see them,” Sabo says now.

Sabo’s work is available for viewing or purchase on his website.

And if you’re not a Sabo fan yet, check out our coverage of his previous missions here.