Present Company is a celebration of shared space — an exploration of human connection, where gatherings become portals for unseen visitors. Inspired by memories of Provence and New York City, Taylor Quitara’s paintings suggest that every encounter is shaped not only by those in the room, but also by the emotions and stories that hover just beyond view.
Taylor Quitara: Painting the Invisible
Taylor Quitara is a multidisciplinary artist whose work blurs the boundaries between the digital and the material, the intimate and the universal. Through large-scale, dreamlike oil paintings, she constructs spaces where memories soften and reshape, where grief and tenderness intermingle, and where transformation quietly unfolds.
Rooted in the emotional terrain of personal evolution, Quitara’s practice captures the fleeting moments that live in the body long after they’ve passed. Her romantic sensibility and intuitive mark-making give form to the ineffable—rendering the unsaid in color, gesture, and layered abstraction.
Rather than depicting reality, Quitara creates entire inner worlds—landscapes of remembrance, longing, and becoming. With vulnerability as a through-line, her work resonates like a diary written in oil, offering viewers not just an image, but an invitation to feel.
“My paintings aren’t just images, they are worlds I build — a personal universe shaped by feeling and imagination.”
For this exhibition, Kalei curated design pieces and objects that act as characters within Taylor Quitara’s universe—echoes of emotion, memory, and presence. Together, the paintings and design create a space where presence lingers, and the line between artwork and environment—between intimacy and imagination—gently dissolves.
Present Company: A Celebration of Shared Space
Present Company is a celebration of shared space — an exploration of the magic woven through human connection, where gatherings become portals for unseen visitors. Drawing inspiration from memories of Provence and New York City, Taylor Quitara’s paintings suggest that every encounter is shaped not only by those physically present but also by veiled guests, lingering emotions, and stories hovering just beyond the edge of reality. Through whimsical color and surreal figures, Quitara’s work poses haunting questions: What energies accompany us into shared spaces? What lingers—uninvited, unnoticed, yet undeniably present?
In dialogue with Quitara’s paintings, Kalei contributes a curated selection of design pieces—objects that seem to carry their own stories, holding space for memory, intimacy, and the quiet surrealism of shared experience.
PRESENT COMPANY is on view at Kalei from August 12 to September 28, 2025.
