A Pixies song is perhaps the best analogy for a Jules de Balincourt show: the 18 oil- and acrylic-on-panel paintings in Malpais are arranged loud, quiet, loud, varying from book-size to gallery-wall expansive. And like indie pop, de Balincourt's mannered aesthetic is catchy and ironic, amateurish but smart, and often as blunt as it is frustratingly coy. The young Paris-born painter's adroit abstractions, notably Where Is Your Flag Now, an array of candy-stick diagonals and colorful blocks, are even akin to an album cover; each has a memorable textual refrain, often the title, printed across the bottom or side. The show's eye-catcher, Getting to No France, features a map of France with place names left blank, another in a series of bungled geographies for which de Balincourt is known.

-Brian Skar