PACE TAYLOR // Before the Doors Open

On view January 15–February 25, 2024
Opening reception Saturday, January 20 (2–5pm) 

Nationale is pleased to present Before the Doors Open, Pace Taylor’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. As like often calls to like, the series finds its heart in literature, film, and their ever-evolving characters. Authors such as Joan Didion and Shirley Jackson serve as an unexpected homecoming and inspiration for this new collection of emotive portraiture in Taylor’s unmistakable hand. The paintings center figures moving through worlds, reconciling deeply rooted fears with intrinsic desires. Under lush layers of bright pastel, smooth pencil, and signature strokes the exhibition aims to confront one’s innermost monologues. In ten framed paintings and a suite of smaller watercolors, Taylor tackles their personal experiences with self-imposed isolation, agoraphobia, and their cyclical impact on the creative process.

The completed pieces embrace this undercurrent tension by way of soft gradients, tender touch, and evocative expressions. Rich hues of crimson, coral, amber and emerald populate the larger-scale paintings on display. The strategic employ of thresholds—windows, doors, lines—suggest a sense of safe interiority. With a nod to the coy title of the exhibition, this compositional element serves as an invitation, creating the illusion that the viewer is at once there with the subject and removed from them in silent communion. As in Taylor’s early works, the eyes, or lack thereof, serve as forceful focal points. Hand to Eyes (shadow shield) speaks as much intensity in its gaze, half obscured by a gentle forearm, as does the solemn, closed-off body language of In My Room. Fingers graze one another and shoulders touch their neighbors in laughter is possible laughter is possible laughter is possible, which receives its name from Jackson’s final journal entry, “I am the captain of my fate. Laughter is possible, laughter is possible, laughter is possible.” The three figures portrayed here huddle in close proximity, two intently observing the third as if in intimate revelation. In this soft quiet, anything feels possible.

Before The Doors Open is a graceful representation of the dance of decision. Capturing these familiar moments offers solace to viewers who feel a kinship with the weight of existence. It implies that, indeed, we are in good company as captains of our own fates.

Pace Taylor lives and works in Portland, OR. They received their BFA in Digital Arts from the University of Oregon (2015) and have since shown their work regionally, including at Nationale, Upfor, and Oregon Contemporary (formally Disjecta), in Los Angeles at La Loma Projects, and in Paris at Double V Gallery. They have participated in the Ford Family Foundation’s Golden Spot Residency at Caldera, Tropical Contemporary’s Transformation Residency, Centrum’s Emerging Artist Residency, and received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission in 2022. Most recently, they were awarded the Don Bachardy Fellowship by The Christopher Isherwood Foundation to study at the Royal Drawing School of London. Their work is on permanent display at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Health Sciences Building and included in the Rema Hort Mann Foundation. Pace Taylor is represented by Nationale.

This exhibition is supported in part by RACC’s Arts3C Grant program.