If this exhibition had been mounted last summer, how fashionable it would have been. That dizzy vogue for all things dotty will come back to you with a vengeance as you wander round this frustrating, boring, only momentarily gripping show of Sigmar Polke and his dots. All painted in 1996, these 40 gouaches make up the series Music of Unclear Origin; they're described in the catalogue as "cosmic tasters" of his artistic output, but, with two or three exceptions, these are underwhelmingly prosaic works, uniform in tone and style.
Appropriating Benday dots (the coloured dots used in newspaper and advertising production), blown up into a black mesh-like layer, Polke's work has Pop-art references and echoes of Roy Lichtenstein in particular. But he favours complex layering over Pop's simplicity, and tries too hard in these paintings to muster humour and irony - particularly in the titles. Once you've realised that the titles exist separately from the works, that they are the gag, they begin to grate. This is typical: "Of course! Of course!" I Hastily Poured Walter Another Vodka from the Unbelievably Expensive, Ice-Encrusted Bottle, then I Poured Myself Another Few Drops.
Next to such outpourings are variations on Polke's theme: dots, from lace-like fine ones to big, clumsy splodgy ones; acidic bright colours; washes of creamy paint like spilled milk. A painting called You Can Prevent Milk Boiling Over by Putting a Velvet Insole into Your Shoe brings together a Jackie Onassis face, a pair of 18th-century lovers, mad gold streaks and some delicate architectural lines. Ignoring that title nagging you to smile, the painting does have an engaging free-fall energy.
That's about all there is to this series of paintings. If they had been painted 30 years ago, they might have told us something we had yet to discover about mass culture. As it is, there are only rare moments of insight or real visual pleasure here. Such a Delicious Taste of Spring is Polke at his most abstract, an explosion of insect green on a citrus yellow background. There are no dots, only the dynamism of the colours, the elegance of the lines.
At Polke's most figurative, another painting with a cumbersome title includes a watchtower, not unlike the one at Checkpoint Charlie. Polke was born in Silesia, emigrating to West Germany in 1953, so it's hard not to read recent history into the image. The tower, against a murky grey background, stands in a mass of raspberry pink colour, like a web. It could be blood, it could be lost lives. You stand still, wonder, and want to know more. Sadly, that's not the case for most of the work on show.
Until March 18.
Details: 0131-624 6200.
