SaveArtSpace is proud to present Abundance, a public art exhibition on billboard ad space in New York, NY, opening September 4, 2026, curated by Lauren Hirshfield.
The Abundance selected artist is Paul Anagnostopoulos.
How can cycles of care, giving, and receiving be represented? What challenges to fulfillment plague us? What does abundance look like for you, or how might you manifest it?
Opening September 4, 2026, SaveArtSpace will launch a public art installation for the selected artwork on billboard ad space in New York, NY. The public art will be on view for at least four weeks. Billboard location announced on August 17, 2026.
Paul Anagnostopoulos
Find a Way & I Don't Want Your Future, I Don't Need Your Past
Location: Park Ave & Carlton Ave, Brooklyn, NY
Paul Anagnostopoulos is an artist whose paintings explore mythological desire and melancholy through contemporary queer narratives. He graduated with his MFA in Studio Art from CUNY Hunter College in 2023 and his BFA in Studio Art and Art History from New York University in 2013. Anagnostopoulos presented solo exhibitions at Dinner Gallery (New York, NY), Leslie-Lohman Project Space (New York, NY), and GoggleWorks Center for the Arts (Reading, PA). His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art Archives and Library, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, and Yale University. Anagnostopoulos participated in 12 artist residencies in the states and abroad, such as the Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), the Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), and the Association of Icelandic Visual Artists (Reykjavík, Iceland). His work has been featured in Hyperallergic, VICE, Artnet News, and New American Paintings. Anagnostopoulos is based in Queens, NY and Long Island, NY.
Artist Statement:
My work aggregates various histories, beliefs, and symbols translated across cultures as a way to explore Greco-Roman mythological tropes. These concepts of desire, longing, and tragedy are portrayed through contemporary queer narratives. The oil and acrylic paintings serve as postcards from a timeless journey that may or may not have been experienced. These unclear memories invoke the rosy longing of nostalgia. As in Sappho’s ancient portmanteau γλυκύπικρον (glukupikron), or sweet-bitter, opposing forces coexist within my work: abundance and loss, pleasure and pain, beginnings and endings. This carries through to my aesthetic decisions regarding depth and flatness. The picture plane’s surreal and contradicting layers of dimensionality create a vibration and a warmth. My palette operates similarly, and aims to seduce the viewer into an arduous account. The vibrant colors recall kitsch and camp, allowing for moments of humor and melodrama to enter the work. The paintings celebrate queer intimacy and storytelling. The scene’s players are lifted from ancient art and life drawing. These historical and hyper masculine images are manipulated to appear sensitive and emotive. With a shifted focus towards adoration and tenderness, they remain suspended in a fantasy of fulfillment. Male imagery is also sourced from gay magazines of the seventies through the nineties—a moment when a powerful gay identity emerged in response to police brutality, bigoted violence, and disease. By combining these visuals with ancient ones, while also drawing from art historical traditions, I encourage viewers to meditate on queer history and our community’s enduring lineage. I engage mythology and cultural motifs rhizomatically, incorporating layers of significance on both universal and personal levels. These stories connect humans across time and space. I question our place in the universe and present a world in which we reconnect to natural cycles and rhythms. I quote the past to make sense of the present.
Connect with Paul at @paolopablopaul.
Curator
Lauren Hirshfield (she/her) is an independent curator, art strategist, and writer. Her practice centers emerging and under-represented artists through curations linked by the anthropology and sociology of systems, structures and futures. Recent presentations have focused on topics like material transmutation, personal myth-making, speculative fiction, collectivism and eco-futurism. Since 2016 she has curated over 50 exhibitions across galleries, outdoor venues, platforms, and fairs in NYC, the Hudson Valley, Miami, Vermont, and online. Hirshfield is the former co-founder of the curatorial project turned artist professional development network PARADICE PALASE, and the founder of the experimental dealer account @temp.img. She has been a visiting critic and lecturer with numerous universities and residency programs, most recently with The New York Arts Program, and has published reviews and interviews with TUSSLE and Cultbytes. Her curatorial work has appeared in The New York Times, artnet, The Art Newspaper, Cultbytes, and The Observer. She lives and works between Brooklyn, NY and Rosendale, NY and is currently completing a Certificate in Arts Management from New York University.
Connect with Lauren at @artfreaky_.
SaveArtSpace
Founded in 2015, SaveArtSpace is a non-profit organization that works to create an urban gallery experience, launching exhibitions that address intersectional themes and foster a message of social change that benefits the working class. By placing culture over commercialism, SaveArtSpace aims to empower artists from all walks of life and inspire a new generation of young creatives and activists.