A touch too much Matisse

When Brian Calvin was included in The Americans New Art exhibition two years ago, his Californian slacker paintings showed vacant-looking, grungy types plucking at guitars or frozen in strange mid-gesture.

They opened on to weird narrative possibilities, and Calvin received the honour of comparison with Alex Katz, whose graphic style was emulated in the younger artist's own cartoon-like simplicity. Some things have changed since then.

Clavin's terms of reference are wider - there is for instance a mini-canvas of a Matisse, a shuttered window through which a figure sitting at a curlicued balcony looks out on to a seascape - yet conversely, something in the quality of his observations has narrowed. He has moved away from the narrative tableau in which the relationship between characters suggests an intriguing, and occasionally faintly creepy set-up.

With his strangely cropped paintings, he seems to have incorporated an almost mystical, portentous quality that relies heavily on the humour. These are mostly paintings of the beach, with broad expanses of blue or pink - Calvin has obviously gone a bit Matissean with his palette too.

But his figures on the beach, and birds caught mid-hover are awkward, their stylistic naivety ham-fisted.