Exhibition: Half-Lowered Eyelids by Gareth Cadwallader, Josh Lilley Gallery, London

“Not only do living things lessen the disorder in their environments; they are in themselves, their skeletons and their flesh, vesicles and membranes, shells and carapaces, leaves and blossoms, circulatory systems and metabolic pathways – miracles of pattern and structure. It sometimes seems as if curbing entropy is our quixotic purpose in the universe”

James Gleick

In the serene worlds depicted by the meticulous deftness of Cadwallader’s brushwork, the figures do indeed anchor the compositions – disinterested protagonists somehow trapped in a slow-warp stasis of their own particular time and space. Quotidian life appears at first glance precisely depicted, yet the narratives of this reality are unclear and enigmatic. The subjects, or perhaps actors, engage in the quiet ritual of everyday tasks, alone in their thoughts and seemingly ensconced in serene moments of tranquil reflection.

But hovering simultaneously within this narrative (or lack thereof) lies an ambiguity that mitigates the possible onset of banality. Within the humming temporal stillness the activities themselves are a source of puzzlement. What is it that so transfixes the subjects of Cadwallader’s paintings? These mundane tasks appear possessed of ritual or symbolic meaning buried deep in the performance of the activities themselves. Contemplation of a glass of juice, an egg or a bowl of oranges at table in the midst of an arcadian grove, seem somehow redolent of arcane ritual or imbued with the symbolism of seventeenth century Dutch genre painting.

Nonetheless, the very stillness of the enactments in the paintings’ foregrounds stabilise the air of pictorial balance. It is under scrutiny that this equilibrium begins to come apart at the seams, an up-close inquiry necessitated by the paintings’ modest scale and the urge they create to peer deep into their interior realms. Natural order and the stable zen supplied by the paintings’ facades makes way for psychedelic vignettes of jangling form and pattern. Leaves and trees break down into a fractal-swirl of chaos created by arcing loops of out-of-place colour. Nature is delineated by the atomic minutiae of its constituents, perhaps even as they might appear under microscopic examination. In ‘Coffee’ flecks of actual glitter populate the dark margins to the sides of the window. Holistic stillness is confronted, undermined. These passages are painting eco-systems almost unto themselves.

Paintings like these are difficult to position. They hover effortlessly in a recognisable yet fictitious and theatrical place. They belong to no school or movement yet they nod, confidently, in passing to various antecedents and peers. One sees a touch of surrealism, but a more sober and detached kind, like one might recognise in de Chirico or Balthus. More apposite, perhaps, is the work of Félix Vallotton, the great Swiss paint-shaman who somehow managed to flood all of his paintings with symbolic heft, even in passages of aloof flat colour, and especially where the shadows lengthen.

Going further back one thinks of the painterly minutiae of Hilliard’s great ‘Young man Amongst Roses’, or even echoes of the disturbed Victorian genius Richard Dadd, who, from the confines of Bedlam (Bethlem Royal Hospital), conveyed the intricate and spellbinding magic of the færie realm with astonishing and compelling precision. Of course each is a technical tour de force, and Cadwallader shares a certain sumptuous but unflashy mastery of his medium with Graham Little, his compatriot. His is a magical realism with no assertion of formal or political position. His works are jewel and craft, technique and beauty, story and picture – almost romantic but with no drama.