Reviewed:

Rock, Danny Osborne, Taylor Galleries, Dublin, until September 22nd (01- 6766055)

The Paradise (2), Patrick Hall, Douglas Hyde Gallery 2, Dublin, until September 22nd (01-6081116)

Sonja Shiel, Cross Gallery, Dublin, until September 22nd (01-4738978)

After America, Lorcan Walshe, Jorgensen Fine Art, Dublin, until September 26th (01-6619758)

Danny Osborne's work is always difficult to classify, perhaps because he is, at heart, not so much an artist in the conventional sense of the term as an idiosyncratic descendant of pioneering 19th-century amateur naturalists. A singular combination of artist, craftsman and scientist, Osborne has a meticulous technique that is very much in the service of equally meticulous observation.

Through it all runs an intense, undiminished wonder at the way things are, recalling Goethe's reminder to those inclined to get carried away with theory: "Do not try to get beyond the phenomena. They themselves are the doctrine." Hence Osborne's minutely detailed topographical landscape paintings and, equally, his series of porcelain human figures, almost eerie in their obsessive precision.

Rock, at the Taylor Galleries, is extraordinary in that it is both out of the ordinary and exceptional in its level of achievement. We already have ample evidence of his fascination with rock, in the form of the Oscar Wilde memorial in Merrion Square. There, his rapt absorption in detail and variety arguably tells against the overall cohesiveness of the sculpture; this does not happen in the varied, smaller pieces in Rock.

The show consists of a series of carved sculptures, usually featuring an anatomically exact representation of a stomach, plus some collected objects, including a human skeleton, and a series of photographic collages. There is also a portrait bust, carved in a glassy variety of the quartz that is the show's staple - and stunning - material.

Throughout, Osborne seems to be exploring and interrogating a basic opposition between the softness of flesh and the hardness of stone. Except that the opposition tends to dissolve in the way stone can be made to mimic pliantly organic forms, and in the playful choreographed interaction, in the collages, between a naked human figure and a landscape of stone that has been folded as though it is as flexible as flesh.

Some images hint at a view of the landscape as a kind of body, then, in the form of the skeleton, the body as a kind of stone, a landscape itself. These concerns reflect an underlying engagement with the relationship between people and landscape that is perhaps Osborne's primary interest.

In the diminutive Douglas Hyde Gallery 2, Patrick Hall is the third in a series of artists to have taken up the challenge of making a show on the theme of "the paradise". He shows a group of works on paper, unpretentiously displayed. The tone is muted and introspective, not gloomy but for the most part fairly sombre. In terms of content, he counterpoints treatments of transcendental biblical imagery - Jacob's ladder, seraphim - with unassuming, factual flower studies.

While everything in the show is, necessarily, quite small, the flower pieces are uniformly smaller than the visionary images, as if to emphasise that the latter are, in fact, epics in miniature. Some of the work recalls that most consciously monumental of painters, Anselm Kiefer, with whom Hall has an affinity.

Hall undercuts a tendency towards portentousness with an understated humour, as in memorable works featuring masses of people gazing at mysterious objects suspended in the heavens. He keeps up a lively dialogue between the show's two strands: our preoccupation with the universal and transcendental, and the more modestly pitched here-and-now of the Edenic flower studies - which are, appropriately, beautiful in an entirely unsentimental way.

Sonja Shiel, whose first solo show is at the Cross Gallery, is a subtle textural painter. The densely layered, scarred surfaces of her paintings are built from a range of resonant greys, together with the weathered residues of underlying colour. She is thoughtful and intelligent in her method, consistently eschewing facile effects, preferring a considered, slow-burning approach. Everything is worked through.

The work is collectively an attempt to express the relationship between migratory birds and their environments. Open spaces are juxtaposed with clusters of activity, evoking not only the physical presence and absence of the birds but also noise and silence. Occasionally, she uses the representational shorthand "V" to indicate the birds, though not, on the whole, intrusively. The least successful works are the large paintings. They are not at all bad but, by comparison with the smaller pieces, in them Shiel seems relatively unsure of her touch. The indications are that this will change over time.

After America, at Jorgensen Fine Art, is a departure for Lorcan Walshe. While his previous work showed a conspicuous investment in boldly representational technique, here he is more tentatively exploring the possibilities of abstraction. Interestingly, for the most part he paints abstracts like a representational painter, as though representational images had mutated into something else, a something he depicts with the same measured attention he applied to figures and objects.

There is a sense that this work is dominated by spaces and objects. A series of warm, atmospheric compositions recalls the pared-down universe of Charlie Brady. At times, Walshe seems to surprise himself by ending up with strange, enigmatic images, like a traveller who looks around and wonders if this place was marked on the map.

One of the best pieces is Coltrane, which may or may not refer to the jazz musician but is, in any case, an extremely well resolved composition that balances an interesting range of colours and tones. It is a show that significantly opens out Walshe's language.