Reviewed:

Charles Tyrrell, Paintings, Taylor Gallery until December 8th (01-6766055)

Nathalie du Pasquier, Paintings, Rubicon Gallery until December 22nd (01-6708055)

Charles Tyrrell's work, at the Taylor Gallery, ranges in medium and size from pencil drawings not much larger than postage stamps to four large oil paintings. In between are a number of paintings on aluminium plates. Running through all of this work is a concern with the square as a compositional unit - manifest in an exploration of possibilities in terms of geometric and irregular subdivisions, and its mirrored, overlapping repetition and extension.

In the paintings, this all happens within the ambit of the square itself. It is only in the tiny drawings that Tyrrell actually multiplies the forms and extends them beyond the boundaries of this favoured format, coming up with a variety of overall shapes. At first glance this may seem odd.

Yet there is tremendous tension in the exhibition between the paintings, made within the rigorously enforced square format, and the tiny drawings. It is as if the energies bound up in the paintings are allowed a degree of explosive transformation in the drawings, which have an exceptionally concentrated quality (and are terrific pieces of work). We can readily relate them to the paintings, and each gains from the other. It seems as though the exploded form of the drawings gives a clue to the kind and level of energies contained in the paintings, folded up in them like additional dimensions. These drawings might relate back to a series of small paintings called Dream Fields, made a few years ago, which incorporated an extended square form, albeit only within the security, so to speak, of the overall square container, and sanctioned by the "dream" in the title.

Tyrrell has, though, previously made relatively large-scale paintings that expanded on a square format in this way, reaching out into real as opposed to dream space. They were sculptural works, painted on sections of recycled heavy wooden beams; and there again, by different, more concrete means, he evoked a sense of great density, weight and force in the way he extrapolated from the square. In a way, while the paintings hold everything together, the drawings, like those earlier sculptural works, explore what happens when everything flies apart.

The paintings are held together by the geometry of the square, by its secure symmetries, its scaffolding of diagonals and reassuring horizontal and vertical braces. These various elements are implicitly there in the compositions, but their presence is on occasion explicitly indicated as well, as reminders to us, or perhaps as points of reference for the artist. On this underpinning, Tyrrell creates very slick, fast surfaces, never more so than when painting on aluminium. He clearly relishes the lack of give in the smooth metal, the way it bounces the paint right back at us, offering us scant comfort in terms of any pictorial space.

In what is for him a relatively varied group of works, he comes up with paintings that, while differing significantly in appearance, really embody different treatments of a common idea. One large painting, for example, is inscribed with layer upon layer of lines that provisionally mark out a roughly symmetrical pattern, so that we simultaneously view a succession of overlapping attempts at a particular image. Another reiterates a simple symmetrical motif, amplifying it via a series of concentric lines, made freehand and accepting the fallibility of the hand. In each case, the implication is that no one version or stage holds precedence. Like the slippery mirrored surfaces of the aluminium plates, it could be a way of arriving at a stance of promising us nothing or, more accurately, of pointing out to us that there is nothing to be promised.

One might think that Nathalie du Pasquier, at the Rubicon Gallery, has little in common with Tyrrell, given that she is a representational painter of still life subjects. In fact, she paints in a very specific, pared-down way, and about two-thirds of the paintings in her show are not only square in format, but also are, quite strikingly, compositionally based on the structural dynamics of the square.

The objects she depicts are very ordinary, even anonymous, with just the occasional hint of ornament, presented in such a way as to indicate that ornament is not the point. In the paintings, casual arrangements of bottles and glasses and cups are brightly lit, enhanced in scale, and offered up to the front of the picture plane with flattened perspective and a simplified range of colour and tone.

Simplified, but not simple: it is very difficult to formulate such a spare pictorial language and yet make extremely interesting paintings, which is what she does. Her preoccupation with surface comes through, not only in the stark, flattened views she is drawn to, but also, with this body of work, in her use of glass, transparency and distortion. While Giorgio Morandi - an obvious exemplar in relation to her pictures - first painted the surfaces of wine bottles and jugs that he then depicted in his still lifes to make them appear as opaque, solid objects, du Pasquier repeatedly presents us with surfaces that slip and slide away, affording us no such sense of opaque solidity.

Our eyes either slide across them, momentarily suspending disbelief, buying into the illusion of implied surface, or see right through them. There is more than a formal point here, more than a gravitational fall towards the flatness of the picture plane. We are also being reminded that we're dealing with the false promise of an acknowledged illusion or, as with Tyrrell, with an image that veers close to being self-cancelling, a mirror which refers both artist and ourselves back to the world around us.