One of the surprises of IMMA's large painting show was the scarcity of painters who seemed to find fresh reasons for painting. The Green on Red's modest Small Paintings show is an exercise different in scale and ambition to that at Kilmainham, but gives a more comprehensible suggestion of why contemporary artists choose to paint.
The show features a mixture of Irish artists and generally better known painters from America and Europe, and unfortunately the Irish painters in general are also the less impressive. Neither John Noel Smith's Brace, a tiny diptych featuring pink-and-red chains, nor Fergus Feehily's gritted teeth minimalist oil on MDF panel, John, really make very strong cases for retro work.
Simon Reilly's set of nine related images of pale nucleilike forms, hovering over a deep blue ground, appears to share some concerns with Mark Francis, hinting, as Francis pictures do, at sub-atomic activity made temporarily visible. Mark Joyce's untitled image goes the macro, shrinking the globe to fit its tiny frame and rendering it in banal, Gary Hume-like colours.
American contributor, John Zinsser's New Brothers, two huge swipes of heavy chive mustard pigment, over a pale mauve ground, has its antecedents in Pop, but strikes an entirely different note with its sarcastically queasy colours.
David Row's canvases suggest smooth scratches in celluloid film, as circular motion eats through one layer of pigment to reveal another, equally restive surface broiling below. Belgium Herbert Hammak's contribution, a small red picture at first sight, appears to be a slick, miniaturised Rothko. Closer inspection reveals that rather than painting the image, Hammak has created it by casting translucent red resin (in the manner of Rachel Whiteread) over his canvas, allowing his surfaces to become complex, ever-changing, evoking an unapproachable inner space.
Until September 27th
