Pace Gallery Takes on 27-Year-Old Painter Pam Evelyn, Making Her the Youngest Artist on Its Roster

The latest artist to join Pace Gallery is now the youngest one in its stable: 27-year-old British painter Pam Evelyn, who will have her first show with the gallery at its London space this September.

Only rarely do mega-galleries like Pace take on young artists like Evelyn, who only earned her master’s degree last year. For the most part, Pace’s roster is made up of established artists with cemented market followings, like Jeff Koons, Robert Longo, and Adrian Ghenie.

Evelyn works in abstraction, sometimes producing works that involve the layering and removal of paint over the course of months. She also makes works on paper that are done more quickly.

“My practice is rooted in instinct and impulse,” she told Wonderland ahead of a 2021 solo exhibition at Peres Projects in Berlin. “I’m very attentive to the patterns of structure and colour that materialise in each work … it’s a process I like to refer to as ‘a mist rising.’”

She also had a solo exhibition at the Approach gallery in London in 2022, and has appeared in group shows at Baert Gallery in Los Angeles and Massimodecarlo in Paris.

Few works by Evelyn have come to public auction, although one painting produced in 2020, before she even had her MA, sold at Phillips in 2022 for £81,900, more than six times its high estimate.

Pace Gallery has been rapidly adding artists to its roster in the past year, with recent additions including Grada Kilomba, Hank Willis Thomas, and the estates of Yoo Yongkuk and John Wesley.