The title of Richard Gorman's exhibition at the Gallagher Gallery, at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, is interesting in at least two respects. One, it is disarmingly reductive - Nine Paintings - terse and factual, making no claims, not giving much away, recalling the minimalist doctrine about what you see being what you get. Two, an entirely reasonable response would be: only nine paintings, in a huge gallery like the Gallagher; is he out of his mind?

There are only nine paintings, and the Gallagher is a big gallery, but the paintings are big as well. Each is made up of two rectangular panels, making a square that measures three metres on each side. The surfaces are composed of large areas of flattish colour, with no more than three colours per painting and often only two.

The space of each square is divided in simple, clean-edged but also varied and apparently idiosyncratic ways. That is to say, while there are consistences, there is no uniform language in the way that, for example, Sean Scully builds his paintings with stripes and blocks of colour.

Gorman likes curvilinear forms. For the most part, even if lines start out running straight and true, they soon arc into curves. But where in Flatform the form is irregular, with an amorphous, organic feel, Sen is uncompromisingly regular and symmetrical. In fact, in an interview for the catalogue, he remarks that Sen had its inception in a sketch based on a glimpse of the snout of "a Shinkansen train arriving in a station in Japan".

He doesn't shy away from such associations, but he doesn't court them, either. Perhaps helpfully, he prints a grid collage of photographs over a double page of the catalogue.

It is, he explains, an impromptu account of the context within which the work was made and which, we can infer, informs the work in various ways. There are, for example, several shots of the elegantly engineered curved roof of a railway station, and it is easy enough to discern a link between such architectonic, technological forms and his paintings.

There are other kinds of links as well, however. A feature of these and other recent paintings is a very distinctive use of a cleanly articulated line - a continuous line but occasionally, intriguingly, a dotted line - that usually echoes the outline of a colour division.

It is an ambiguous device that in a way undermines the certainty of the otherwise clear, authoritative colour divisions, suggesting a level of fallibility, like colours printed slightly out of register, or having second thoughts. It is also spatially mischievous, playing with the possibility of illusion where otherwise illusion is kept at bay.

Gorman cites another, oblique reference, in the form of his interest in Japanese woodblock prints. As he says: "the flat shapes and linear qualities of the prints are amazing." And details of woodblock prints turn up in his photographic collage.

The work of another acknowledged influence, Piero della Francesca, does not, but the calm poise of della Francesca's compositions and his colour sense are certainly relevant points of reference.

Gorman has always had a very distinctive colour sense, favouring muted, harmonious tones and combinations of colour with a distinctly retro feel.

In his catalogue interview, Patrick T Murphy, the gallery's director, remarks on the in-built quality of nostalgia, perhaps a kind of longing, that follows from this palette.

The colour in this body of work has a calm, subdued quality, although on occasion, as in Cover, it is notched up several degrees, to a point where it is almost jarring, almost a little uncomfortable.

Even where an element of discomfort is not so directly present, however, there is usually an edginess or precariousness, as in the use of line, that prevents us from relaxing too much.

Both writers of the catalogue texts, Murphy and Emily Cargan, seem to agree that Gorman is intent on nudging us towards as direct an engagement as possible with the physical fact of the painting before us.

Cargan describes each finished work as "a complex environment that may be known only as it is inhabited". In a similar vein, Murphy says to Gorman that "it is almost as if you want to corral the viewer into a physical, dare I say sexual, engagement, an intimate closeness".

At the same time, perhaps appropriately, Gorman comes across as being determined to leave the encounter to viewer and painting. Almost pedantically, he comes back again and again to the factual qualities of painting.

"Paint does two things at once. As you apply it to a surface, it cancels the previous surface with the reverse side of itself, and with the outside of the pigment it creates a new surface."

He even adds a haiku-style postscript, entitled Paint, to the catalogue: "Covering, it cancels / factual and flat / it dries / itself."

"You know the expression 'as boring as watching paint dry'?" he asks. "Well, I've always thought that I don't find it boring at all. I think it fascinating to watch paint dry." He smiles.

Nine Paintings by Richard Gorman are at the RHA Gallagher Gallery (01-6612558), Dublin, from Friday until October 21st