Our opening with Daniel Mullen

Diamond Zhou
Apr 18
2 min read

welcome to our

SATURDAY EVENING POST

April 18th, 2026

By Diamond Zhou

Two large abstract paintings with vertical stripes hang in a minimalist gallery, reflected on the shiny floor, creating a serene atmosphere. — Daniel Mullen "Echoes" Installation at PKG. Photography by Kyle Juron.

Daniel Mullen’s opening left behind the rare feeling that one has not simply seen paintings, but entered into them. These works do not yield themselves immediately, they ask for the kind of attention that is now almost radical: sustained, embodied, unhurried looking. When you approach them in person, the surfaces seem to hold a low and steady vibration, something that cannot be reproduced in photographs and cannot be fully explained by language alone. One feels it in the room, in the pacing of the body, in the quiet recalibration of one’s own attention. Mullen has spoken of slow looking, and these paintings make that idea tangible. They gather force gradually, through duration, through atmosphere, through an almost physical relation between colour, edge, scale, and silence.

What was so striking at the opening was precisely this sense that the paintings had altered the space around them. Together they produced an experience that recalled, for me, something of the psychological and spiritual charge of the Rothko Chapel: not in imitation, but in affect, in the way painting can become an environment of feeling and contemplation rather than simply an image to be read. These are mature works, beautiful and restrained, silent yet unmistakably strong. Their strength lies not in insistence but in conviction. In that stillness there is depth, and in that depth there is a kind of sublimity, one grounded less in grandeur than in presence.

It was also deeply moving to see the response to Daniel himself. He was warmly received during the opening, and it said something important that even people at the restaurant we were in recognized him. There is clearly a genuine and far-reaching affection for him and for his work, a sense that he carries with him a community of admirers that extends far beyond any one city. That warmth was felt at the opening, but so too was the recognition that this exhibition marks a significant development. These paintings are very different from his last show with us. They feel deeper, quieter, even more resolved. They have arrived at a new register of confidence and stillness.

Congratulations to Daniel Mullen on a remarkable exhibition. This is a show that truly must be seen in person, because so much of what it offers exists between the body and the painting, between looking and feeling, between silence and vibration. There is no time to miss it.

Exhibition continues through May 16th.