There must be a certain amount of irony, then, in using 'Zip Code' for the title of an exhibition of paintings by Norbert Schwontkowski at the Kerlin Gallery. Schwontkowski's paintings are the very opposite of rigid codification: they point to dislocation, uncertainty and the inability to pin things down.

There is no simple code with which to decipher his work; no zip to close them up definitively; no fast and easy way to read his paintings. Instead, his works possess an inherent ambiguity and a quiet sense of melancholy. They seem to suggest that we occupy a tiny, inconsequential position in a vast universe which we cannot possibly comprehend . . . never mind carve up into digestible zip code-like chunks. And yet, there is also a touching humanity in his paintings, and a tender attention to those seemingly insignificant details that reveal man's lonely, isolated position in the world.

This is Schwontkowski's first solo exhibition in Ireland. He was born in Bremen, Germany in 1949 and is still based there. A professor of painting at the Hochschule fur bildende Kunst Hamburg, he has exhibited since the 1970s, but his work has only come to international prominence recently.

The paintings of Schwontkowski have an elusive, enigmatic feel, with an uncanny atmosphere pervading the slightly unreal world he has created. There is a mingling of irony and menace, and a threatening uneasiness is mixed with a quirky, everyday quality.

They are narrative, figurative scenes that straddle the boundary between reality and the imagination.

His images depict blasted landscapes with eerie skies. They could almost be postapocalyptic visions, but they are without doubt contemporary scenes, featuring electricity poles, fridges and advertising signage.

Some landscapes are unpeopled, but human activity is always hinted at, whether by a building, a light, or a whiff of smoke.

The paintings tend to focus on a single, simple motif . . . a tree, a figure, a building.

Sketchy, naively painted figures float in sparse, horizonless spaces, surrounded by murky colours and hazy atmospheres.

Schwontkowski's almost childlike style is reminiscent of a children's book illustration, but without a story to explain the significance. The titles, however, hint at deeper layers of meaning and often have a witty twist.

Chance plays a significant role in Schwontkowski's paintings and, in this regard, he has developed an unusual working method which causes the paintings' streaked, mottled and weathered appearance. He uses a mix of linseed oil, pigments, metal oxides, water, binding colours and bone glue for the background and, while still wet, he paints the sketchy details on top. As the paint dries, a chemical process takes place in which the metal oxides cause unpredictable changes.

By the time the paint has dried, the appearance may have altered dramatically.

One of the largest images is 'Cine I'. It features a greenish-grey landscape and a dull, putrid sky. A corrugated iron barn, with a sign saying 'cine' perched on top, sits on the horizon of an empty wasteland. Two electricity poles and a cable cross the landscape.

Contemporary life is evoked, but here it is reduced and wasted. 'Vor dem Sturm' ('Before the Storm'), meanwhile, with its ominous, lurid sky looming above a town, hints that the chaos is yet to come.

Other paintings depict the darkness of night, when everything is in shadows and nothing seems real. One such work features a man raiding his fridge. The man, engaged in this mundane act, is surrounded by shadows and, standing in his underwear, seems vulnerable. But there is irony in the work's title . . . 'Bosch' possibly refers to the Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch, known for his surreal, macabre paintings. But, in fact, it is consumer culture that infuses the scene . . . written on the fridge is the brandname Bosch.

A series of eight small paintings hang in a scatter arrangement: taken together they evoke a sense of our tiny size in the face of nature and of our attempts to impose order.

The work of Schwontkowski displays a wide range of influences, including children's art, surrealism, romanticism, popular culture and, in particular, Japanese woodcut prints. These prints were known as ukiyo-e, meaning pictures of the floating world, and they depicted the ephemeral, seemingly insignificant activities of daily life.

This is an apt description of Schwontkowski's own approach. Instead of inhabiting a world of zip codes, where areas are reduced to numerical systems, Schwontkowski's dreamlike universe is afloat, and we are cast adrift.