Save us from the drones

How does one tackle big ideas within a purely traditional visual medium? This is the first problem facing David Breuer-Weil as he takes on some of the concerns afflicting the modern age.

The accompanying literature presents a forbidding list: genetics, cloning, deforestation, the threat of terror, war and genocide.

In each painting - featuring 50 in this near dilapidated industrial space and painted mostly in a dull uniform palette of oranges and browns - anonymous, naked men are subjugated by various symbolic means.

So we have faceless drones crushed between the pages of weighty tomes, or crawling insectlike while scratching meaningless words into the ground.

One triptych shows these sleepwalking masses filtering through a series of narrow paths, all going in one direction and all leading precisely nowhere. The title of this last piece is Commute, and 'deals with the trials and frustrations of the average commuter'.

But what are we to make of this glibly forged connection between the discomfort of commuting on a crowded, airless underground train and the genocides perpetrated by the world's despots?

And though it seems reasonable enough to occasionally throw up one's hands in exasperation at the lousy modern world, it becomes much less convincing as a viable exploration of the generalised fears many now seem to possess. Surely there is a fresher way of tackling the big themes without resorting to such well-worn cliches, using a language that was once powerful, but is now quite hackneyed.