The synesthesia works explore the sensorial relationship between color and abstract concepts of time and space.
In collaboration with American artist and filmmaker Lucy Cordes Engelman, whom he is married to, Mullen paints as a conduit for her sensorial experience between color and time. Each color they use represents a number, and when these numbers are used to illustrate time the painting appears as a layered image, a representation of time.
The precise match between pigmentation and geometry present in the synesthesia’s set creates unusual perspectives, and confuses the viewer with all sorts of optical illusion, in a direct reference to the kinetic movement in the 50s. Canvases gain volume throughout the artist’s technique; it appears to look like an encrustation of dozens of multicolored glass plates that move toward the observer.