Primal Form, Multiple Times

FEMA Gallery – Cascais, 2024
By Daniel Mullen
Text: Cristiana Tejo

The primeval form of the world refers to the initial or primordial state of the Earth, before any significant development, and can be understood as a chaotic and incipient state, whether in mythological terms of a primordial chaos or in scientific terms as a young and dynamic planet, still in the process of formation. Daniel Mullen’s primal form is the rectangle, a basic geometric figure crucial to geometric theory and, in turn, abstract art. However, for this artist it is a fundamental form of his work and has been explored in different ways in his paintings and, more recently, in sculptures. The works already evoked volume and three-dimensionality, but Daniel felt the need to expand his spatial investigation to ceramics and wood. In this research, he ended up coming across the density, temporality and complexity of the material, very different from the characteristics of his paintings full of translucency, agility and simplicity. In experimenting with the three-dimensional, issues with light and shadow and opacity and transparency gained new nuances.

The aesthetic operation engendered by Daniel Mullen with his primeval form resides mainly in repetition and recombination. In this new crop of works, the concept of time is also activated not only by the difference in the time spent making paintings and sculptures, but by the temporalities evoked by the forms: Aztec pyramids, futuristic constructions and digital language. The recombinations and twists of the rectangles activate these multiple times associated with historical moments in our unconscious. We cannot forget that one day the digital world will be the past, as are the pyramids and what we called the future until the end of the 20th century. In his poetics, therefore, Daniel activates the timeless character of geometry and the possibilities of abstraction in the current moment.